The Answer is... Dance

I arrived in Havana the night of its 490th anniversary. That's 490 years of occupation and revolution. No breaks.


I think of how Australians would feel after a week like that – and how drunk they'd get. Or how bloodthirsty the Americans. The Cubans have a different answer to poverty, injustice and hardship.

The answer is... dance.


No one here hides, if asked, that life is hard. But you've really got to ask. Because just by looking at their faces, their interactions, or even in passing conversation, you'd think everyone had something to celebrate. In salsa clubs, people look like they've won the lottery.

Havana Vieja is pulsing with an upbeat energy. And last night, as my dance teacher and i wiped the sweat from our faces by the dancefloor, i asked her whether maybe Cuban psychology had triumphed over stuggle because of its cultural obsession with music and dance.

“Si...”, her teeth beamed back at me.

one of the cafe's where i write these posts

If music is Cuban prozac, dance might be a triple dose.

Every night of the week, any minute of the day, Cubans burst into dance. Four year olds playing on the side walk move better than i ever will, and women have a subtle dance in their walk. There isn't a street in old havana where music can't be heard, either wafting in, or direct from, a two-, three-, seven-piece band. No matter where you look, someone seems to be moving to a salsa beat.

And when you're moving beautifully, sexily, totally... is it possible to be unhappy? Try it... you can't. You feel too good.

“No One Puts Baby in the Corner”
(patrick swayze, r.i.p.)

The misery was therefore all mine in an outdoor club called Chevere last night. There i watched miracles of sexiness and celebration performed, while i blundered and stalled my frustrated dance partners. One patted me on the head when we were done. Another would have thrown me over the railing (and looked like he could), if he hadn't also found me charming.

Just as i was sinking into a near tearful determination, Tito found me.

“Let's go...” he said.
“I'm terrible...” i answered.
“You're not” he said, seriously.

He started to move me around the dance floor, and my feet followed. I completed his turns, i followed his sequences. I got us tangled a couple times, but he just unravelled himself and repeated the move, until i got it right. Later i learned he is an instructor, and knows well how to lead beginners. The others were expecting me to writhe and jiggle about a year too early.

Later that evening, after another demoralizing effort with a sweaty german man, my teacher pointed out that with the moves we've practiced, i'm doing okay. It's just the 300 other combinations i'm getting lost on.

(She likes to simplify things, like saying that all a woman has to do is remember to step diagonally backwards on beats one and five... the rest is just following the man. How does one say “bullshit” in spanish?)

But truly, last night i feel i received my misson. I don't remember when i last wanted something in this deep gut kind of way. My heart flutters when i watch these women move, and my eyes must fill with an inspired hunger. I absorb the rich graceful joy of these dancefloors, and my body wants, and wants, and wants, to feel like that, so free.

And so my cuba story has found its plot. I am here to do just one thing... learn cuban slasa. Ideas i had yesterday about peru or india evaporated last night. I am not leaving Cuba, or even moving from Havana, until i can dance one song through without thinking about it; until my body begins to understand what this music wants.


I might be years away from contending with a Cubana. But at best, in a few weeks, i'll throw in a couple shoulder jiggles and a body roll. Failing that, at worst, my dance partner will actually feel like he's dancing, not baby sitting.

Starting tomorrow, i'll have two dance teachers every day. Maite, who is my technical director until my heart takes over. And now also a male instuctor each afternoon, who will give me a good whirl. In the evenings, when i have the energy, i'll get my ass kicked at dancefloors around town.

And if i ever feel despondent, lonely or whistful, i will remember how the bouyant Cubans with whom i now live have overcome their life's obstacles and disappointments.

The answer is... dance.

on the wall outside my casa.
in the bubble: "tequiero" (i love you)

Coooba, Cooooba, Coooooooba

Wasn't I in mexico yesterday? Is that a salsa band outside my widow? Is there rum in this tea? Is that someone dancing rumba on stilts outside? Did that car door just fall off turning a corner?

Am i seriously in Havana?


Just three days ago i stared at Emiliano in Mexico city and said, "I think I am going Cuba."

The next day, “I think i am going to Peru.”

He was patient, supportive. He has also traveled for years and knows that once divine timing starts whispering, it can be confusing to decipher its messages. We both know this subtle guidance (sometimes not subtle at all), and have learned to trust it more than any lonely planet, or pre-set itinerary, or even an indulgent love affair with delectable loose ends.


Something silent simply says “go”, meaning turn left now, or, turn right, or eat here, the room you're looking for is this way, speak to her, buy this book... leave tomorrow for Havana and learn to dance.

maite, my technical director, giving me lessons in the living room of my casa

So that's what I did. And this morning, 15 hours after arriving i Cuba, i had my first salsa lesson... in the living room of my crumbling casa. Merci made a call, and Maite, my new teacher, was there in 15 minutes.

This is how everything works here... ask anyone, anything, and they will know the person who
can provide what you need. My spanish coversation classes start tomorrow, also the result of a single casual phone call.

I've organized a tour of the fortresses tomorrow afternoon. And have already bought my second hand copy of Fidel's “The Right to Digity” from a sweet smoking lady who, without intending to rush me, didn't cease to look over my shoulder the entire 20 minutes i was in her shop.

second hand book stalls are a common sight

As i write this, I am sitting in a palacial colonial restaurant, peach walls, dark wood detailing, marble floors. My seat is half in the restaurant, half in the street, in a tall wooden window on a street corner in Havana Vieja. Two men play gentle cuban standards, one on the congas, the other on a variety of shakers.

All i can understand is... “coooba, coooba, cooba-cooba...”

That's approximately how i feel as well.

the view from the fortress shooting windows is more chilled these days

Havana Vieja: Dilapidated Beauty

I have reached Havana. This dilapidated beauty took just seconds to win my heart.

Crumbling, buzzing, joyful and deprived, she pulses with the essence of a vibrant life determined to be lived.

She is peaceful, she is unrestrained, she is all color, all movement, all declaration of heart, and endurance through celebration.


All this extroverted joy and celebration must hide some frustrated hope. Although so far, i have not sensed this shadow myself. Kindess, community, music & dance, and an entirely palpable sense of union, of a need and desire to share the pleasures and burdens of life, pervade the streets... which is where life happens in Havana.

this is my casa, and my room on the right.
door's open. come in...

I found a room in the home of a woman called Merci, who is helping me with my spanish. These private homes, or 'casa particulares', are a flavorful local alternative to hotel stays throughout Cuba.

My vibe train seems to still be on track. This was my first night:

Arriving at the airport, and unable to withdraw money from an ATM or cash converter, i was helped by an easy going Bermudan gay called Imar, who moved to Cuba four years ago in support of the revolution, and to study physiotherapy.


We later shared a cab, and a walk through Havana Vieja (Old Havana). From a street window, we bought a lunch-box size pineapple juice each, and cuban rum in the same packaging. Tearing open the cardboard, we mixed our own drinks and went looking for food.

Plaza Vieja was all barocades for a private event. A wink and a few coins later, security slipped us in and we took a seat on a gorgeous restaurant terrace overlooking the celebration of Havana's 490 year anniversary.


One thousand people poured into the square, and sipping fresh pina we awed for hours... opera, poetry, rumba, salsa, african dance, acting out of historical colonial scenes... Havana came out in force for my first night, and Imar said he hadn't seen anything like it in four years (he lives in a small town an hour's flight away).

Late in the night, I walked down still thriving steets to my new home just two blocks away, and collapsed into bed. Knowing, for certain, i had arrived somewhere very, very special.

but look closely, it's all ruins

Mexico (a.k.a. so what do i really need?)

At 5 a.m. the sun is spreading gold through the air like margerine.

Something stirs Emiliano and I in our tent. Perhaps it's sound of pelicans, or just a call to beauty. I unzip our door, and move my feet out onto the sand. Through half-open eyes i see the blue water lapping the shore, hear its liquid melody, and feel my way out across the pacific ocean. Emiliano stretches out behind me, he purs. I lean back to feel the warmth of his skin.

view from the tent

We are sharing this rough perfection with Daniel and Santin, whose empty tent sits a couple hammocks away. They haven't spent a night in it yet. Daniel's sandy head protrudes from his blue sleeping bag on the beach. I wiggle out of my tent and walk over, squatting silently by his side. We watch the colors of sunrise.

daniel's bed

Santin has risen from his hammock, and sleepily walks over with his camera. Every day he tries to catch the pelicans surfing the waves. They catch the crest just before it rises, then glide precisely along its edge, rising and sinking with the wave, before arching their wings and taking off right as the wave breaks. A few minutes later I feel a light touch. Emiliano is up too, to worship the dawn.

Santin

In silence, the four of us gather. In whispers, we hint at our dreams, the only the things that have passed since we last gathered to share the dusk and the rising moon. Last night there was talk and laughter. Now, we are more still. We will return to our beds soon. But first, we will just breathe a while.

We are on Playa Paraiso, Mexico. The season is so low, we are the only people on this sandbank besides the locals. Nevertheless, the weather is perfect. In the shade of palms, we pass our days. Daniel carves pieces of wood he finds along the beach into gifts for the locals. Emiliano leads yoga in the mornings, and reconnects with his local friends; it is he who has brought us here. I also do what i do best: talk, and listen. Santin is much the same.

Daniel carving a chair

Santin has flown from Brazil to see Daniel. We have never met before, so we share our stories. Daniel, a roaming Argentian, I know from Toronto, but haven't him seen in five years, and before that another five. I came to know Emiliano, our Mexican ambassador, through letters over the past two months. We met in heart before we ever heard a voice.

We've all come together here in leap of faith, a YES to life. Each for our own reasons, and each because we believe in the healing powers of friendship.

We have little, and we want nothing more. We eat what the makeshift kitchen has found in the market, we sleep in the sand, we shower in cold water, we pull water from the well to flush the toilet. We're bitten by fleas from the local dogs. We share music from our ipods played on battery speakers. There is no electricity anywhere.

I feel happy and calm all day. We are all unwinding from the unresolved questions of our lives. We are all experiencing life without the expectations of others. For five days, we live in this way.

And as we drive back to Mexico city, carrying with us still the spirit of our utopia, i feel myself pregnant again with a sincere question:

What else do you really need?

This question is like a season for me; it comes around.

It was born first in a monastery in Nepal, where i found a never-before-felt peace in not wanting anything at all. It was soon reborn on an island in Thailand, where living in indulgent simplicity unlocked the beauty in people; and if not the beauty, the truth.

Again, i felt with total clarity, that there was no reason to live differently than this.

Now I am in living for a while in the colorful poverty of Havana, remembering Mexico, and thinking about the life I'm about to build in Melbourne; the life it will give me, and the life i will give away in order to live in it.

In the west, my needs will suddenly be many, and those needs will beget yet others.

And when my mind explores this question, i get this familiar haunting feeling, this haunting sensation... this sense of a deep loss, of a turning away from a life that's truly according my own heart.

In Mexico, i felt like there was nothing else i really needed. In Thailand, i felt the same.

In Melbourne, i feel like there are constantly things i need, and to have them, i have to give over large pieces of whatever time i have left; and with that time, do things that do not bring me joy.

Does that really make sense?

And then there is love. There is always the problem of love. Where will i find someone else who is living this double life? There aren't that many. Most people tend to choose, and later don't like to be reminded.

If i think of those I have felt love for over the past years, all of them have chosen the purer path, the path of a simpler life. It's not easy, they struggle; they have to make unconventional things work in a conventional world. But perhaps it is better for them than for me. I have to make my unconventional spirit fit into a conventional space. And i have to wonder what other life i could be living.

I cannot take a man like that with me into my western lair, however comfortable it is. I cannot ask him to give up his hard-won truth, so he can share my conflicted but comfortable hypocricy.

What is wrong with living a simple but beautiful life, not needing much, just sharing your days with those around you, and nature? Contributing to your community, doing good. Is there really something wrong with that?

In Mexico, Emiliano brought us to meet a man he knows, who lives under the open sky. We spent an evening with him. Let's call him Shilo. No one could tell me how long he's been living like that, or what happened to his legs, or eye. He moves around mainly on his arms, smiling widely, organizing cushions and mosquito nets for everyone.

Around us, people briefly hammer wooden pillars into the sand. Over that, goes a tarp. And there, he lives. With his drum, with his books, with the elements, with himself.

Despite his hardship, he seems at peace with his choices. Many would say he was happy, but i won't make that assumption. How could i possibly know; and what does that mean anyway?

What struck me about Shilo isn't what he projected, because we all do that, but simply that he is living the life he himself has chosen.

The morning of that golden sunrise, when i unzipped my tent, I knew I had chosen the life I was living. My joys, I recognize as my own. What I lack, is entirely my story as well.

That morning, I felt everything i really needed to be at peace was right there, already in place.

And it is only a testament to how free i'm really not, that after i return to western reality on Feb 1, it may be a long time until like i feel like that again.

Many moments over the past years have awoken in me a call for an authentic existence, away from social expectations, closer to nature, true to my own spirit.

I do not want Shilo's life. That's not what I am saying. I do not want anyone else's life.

I just really want the courage to live my own.

The Amazon Let Me In a While

On the corner of Colombia, Peru and Brazil, the Amazon unraveled just a few vines and let me enter.

Her jungle is perfection and madness, shelter and brutality. Her river is life itself, winding and unknowable.

But above all, Las Amazonas is mysterious. No matter how deep you go, her heart is the horizon you can't reach. She let's you watch, but she doesn't let you see.

Her soul is not for us to understand. But us, she knows well. And in my time there, I could feel my own soul, estranged from its origins, do what it could to taste the truth of Home.

you can see the photo ablum here

My Summer of '69

Red Again

Back in Beijing... more updates on the way

Road to Vipassana

I'm sitting right now at a bus station at 6.30 a.m. in Surat Thani. Bus station in this case means a cluster of rough stone seating in what looks like an outdoor market closed for the night.



As far as local bus stations go, this one is a dream. No one is selling me anything, no one is scamming me (that part of the morning was over with the buying of the ticket), and really, no one cares i'm here. It's early, and people have their own problems.


I forgot to mention my actual destination to the driver of the overnight bus I took from Bangkok, so we drove right past it while I slept. The other passengers had ongoing transit planned, so I was left roadside at 5.30 a.m. on a minor road with only local traffic.

30 minutes to get a ride, 30 to the bus station, and now a 30 minute wait for a bus, and then an hour's drive.

Perfectly normal morning.

My destination is Suan Mokkh monastery (The Garden of Liberation), where I am entering a 10-day Vipassana. They call it a 'solitary meditation retreat' because everyone there maintains noble silence, meaning we refrain from any form of communication, including eye contact.

From tomorrow morning at 4 a.m. until September 11th at 11 a.m., not a word will be spoken, no eyes shall meet, no meal will be eaten after 12 noon, no books will be read, and no words will be written.

my room

The idea, as far as I can understand it so far, is to deprive myself of all stimulation that comes from outside of my mind, leaving me to face to face with that which comes from inside my mind.

The 17-hour (4 a.m. - 9 p.m) day consists mainly of sitting and standing meditations, so we're talking discomfort, boredom, illumination, frustration, memories, desire, clarity... these are the kinds of things I imagine i'll contend with.

my pillow

I cannot wait to go inside. To live inside of consciousness, and nothing else. To look my mind in the eye. To begin to know it. To deepen the work I did in Kopan monastery in Nepal last year.

When I get out, only 10 days – a vast 10 days – away, I will hop onto a boat to Kho Phanghan and return to a beach on its east coast, my happy place. That will be a good day.

the bungalow that waits for me... second from the right

And while it is only 12-days away from this moment, I have no sense of how I will feel on the other side, no insight into the insights I will have, no heart for what my heart will have felt, and no mind for who my mind will have met within itself.

I am saying that as I enter Vipassana, I am perceptive of how little I know about what “I” is. Not the “I” you know of me, but the “I” of the self, of consciousness.

I want to meet my mind. The motor in the funky machine. The wizard behind the kaleidoscope curtain. The thing that wants something. What does it want?

I enter now open to everything. In 12-days, I don't know what I will have seen and felt. This not knowing is excruciating, and electric.

postcards

a cat barked at me just now.

i swear. it barked.

Ode to the Moon

a slab of the moon
between two trees

fireflies impersonating
stars

light
tangled in the branches of the night

on this road by the riverside
where did aloneness end
and loneliness begin

Tabish Kair
(Printed in the menu of Casa Luna, Ubud)

Boundless

a beautiful friend sent me some beautiful words just now, and her timing caused my eyes to burn. i will share two fragments here, because they have spoken for me today.

my journey resonates with this friend. she has been Questing alone on the road for decades, and is a veteran of my spirit.

thanks, Elly, for making today bigger than me.

... I hope for your journey the sweetest fruits, the most intense of aromas and the softest of breezes. Alas, these breezes can sometimes come in gusts, but fuck they tear through us and frighten, and thank god for these emotions, for the sheer opportunity we have given ourselves to know them, to feel them, make love to them and then to sit, silent, just being nothing and everything...

... I think now of holding a little hand, walking down an ancient cobble stone street telling this little person, whom we have made out of love, that this life is here for the living. That there is no such thing as cannot, but only 'can'.

That if they wish they can touch the wet, cold nose of a lion, and walk up or around each and every mountain they see, and taste the most exotic of fruits, straight from the tree, and show themselves, time and time again that their spirit is larger, more limitness and more beautiful than they could ever imagine, and that if they look long enough, in the detail enough, within the setting sun they might see their spirit, their own colour in the palette of the sky...

... That there is only "I can...". That there are no boundaries.

That life is BOUNDLESS.

Nyoman Lara

I really only noticed Nyoman Lara when I climbed into the front seat, after we’d dropped Luca at the airport and the Russian couple in Kuta. It was just me and him in the van now, with an hour’s drive ahead of us.

I actually didn’t feel that much like talking. These were the first minutes of my aloneness on this solo journey. For five weeks, first Dejana and then Luca had kept me company. Now a new phase of my trip was beginning, the one I had envisioned. But I knew it would be a while before I eased into it; a while before alone wasn’t a feeling of missing something.

Maybe I needed to fill the space, so hesitantly I began. As he answered my questions, Nyoman Lara became the first Balinese to break down the wall between tourist and friend.

It was the story of his wife that did it. Things weren’t okay at home, he told me.

“My wife, she is depressed,” he said.

Depressed? He knows what depression is?

After the Bali Bombings in 2002, Nyoman Lara lost his job at a Kuta hotel. It was a good job, and his wife and three children had been above water. In the years after, they had all struggled. Nyoman began working long hours as a taxi driver just to afford food and school supplies.

In the past two years, the price of rice tripled, while his salary stayed the same, and become more unstable.

Then Nyoman’s wife began to experience mood swings. She wore her deep frustration in private and in public, and was despondent, bitter. She felt Nyoman was responsible.

“She is angry all the time,” he says with a gentle Balinese smile, not complaining. “I come home late, and she yells at me.”

“What does she want?” I ask.

“She wants a divorce.”

Not the answer I was expecting. Just a few years ago, divorce was a dangerous taboo in Bali. One with serious consequences in the traditional family compounds in which husband and wife live, together with several other generations, and a few dozen chickens.

I proceed carefully... “And what do you want?”

“If she was healthy, I would say... pause, sigh ... 'okay'. You want divorce? I want you to have what you want. I want you happy,” he says with resignation, with love, even. “But... she is sick. My wife, she is sick. Maybe she doesn’t understand. Maybe, she needs me..."

the red lotus, a symbol of Compassion

When Nyoman dropped me at home, I couldn’t help but hug him.

Maybe she does need him, maybe she doesn't. But I did feel that Nyoman was a man who wanted to do the right thing; and that he in past six years he had spent much less time than me thinking about his own feelings.

Good luck Nyoman. I hope your happy nature and your kindness bring you the love you deserve soon.

postcards

today i saw a man light a cigarette from a burning trash heap.

that's all.

Trail Through July, 2008

THAILAND
Bangkok

CHINA
Beijing, Shanghai

INDONESIA
Ubud, Seminyak, Gili Meno

Julia and Anne Marie

When taking a walk with no destination, along paths with no markings, in villages with no boundaries, on mornings with no expectations, there is a chance that you will come back a slightly different person than when you left.

I said I’d be back in 10 minutes.

But Julia and Anne Marie were out there beyond time. So when I came back 45 minutes later, Luca didn’t ask any questions. He knows when a short walk becomes a long walk, that a journey is unfurling a petal.

The forest behind the rice paddies is thick and overgrown, with crevices plunging into dark green water and palm trees rising up at unpoetic angles. But the green of it is so rich, and the rustling of the wind speaks so reassuringly of peace, that what is wild becomes beautiful, and you walk into it wishing that by loving this tangled mess of nature, that you might come closer to self-acceptance.

“Prophetic Healing – Massage”, and a handprint and an arrow. It was so deeply engraved into the rock that I wondered how it could be, how the rock was once so soft; how the healing hand had been so strong.

When taking a walk with no destination, along paths with no markings, there is a chance that you’ll come across a thing placed there by a person who knows that such walks happen. This is a patient person, and one who either believes in chance, or that there is no such thing.

I turned up the stairs.

They were thick and steep, and heavy with cement and the miles of earth and rock and molten core beneath them. The first pathway appeared to the left, and I paused to make my decision. Tilting my head backwards I saw where the stairs peaked, 10 or 15 stones ahead. It is unlike me, it is unlike most people, to stop so close to the top of something. We all have our reasons to go on. We all crave stories, and courage, and for fate to take our hand.

At the top there was nothing. A long house framed in white with windows instead of walls, all of them dark, and firmly closed. There was no one home, or if they were, they weren’t taking visitors.

I paused again, because when you have time, all moments should be given the chance to be remembered.

Descending I arrived at the first path, which was now on my right, and turned slowly but without hesitation. I was walking softly, not wanting to make more noise than the rustling through the trees. I like this intimacy with nature, and struggle to tolerate those who have no admiration for silence.

Gentle voices and a small Balinese house lay immediately ahead. I turned my head around the corner, saw two women and a deck of cards, and quickly withdrew. Perhaps it was a tarot reading, and I should come back another time. But I didn’t move, realizing of course that I would not come back. I stepped out into the clearing.

“Hello… I’m sorry to… “

Julia and Anne Marie have been following unmarked paths for 50 years. Originally from Melbourne, they now are one of the 200 families or so who live in a sub-tropical town outside of Byron Bay, Northern Queensland. Between them they have been a nurse, a midwife, a teacher a public servant, a medical anthropology PHD, a consultant to NGOs in Papua New Guinea, and an naturapath. They say “we” so often that I know they have been loving and supporting each other for a long, long time.

I turned down tea, but drank up their stories.

They have a spa bath in their back yard, and a few times they positioned everything they might need within reaching distance, and stayed in the bath the whole day.

Julia likes to write, and when she moved to Queensland wrote a column reflecting on life’s big questions for the local newsletter.

They love the diversity of their town, and have never encountered homophobia there.

Anne Marie was recently head hunted for her dream apprenticeship in Melbourne, so they got into their car and drove, and now they are house sitting because it is too expensive to rent.

Julia lived in Papua New Guinea for eight years, and now feels more at home in the tropics than in the city. She heard about this little house from some friends of hers who are building a bungalow next door. It is deep in the forest, and surrounded by paddies. ‘You’ll be in the tropics,’ they said.

And we are, sitting on their open porch, hidden from the beaten path below, where only locals make their way from where they are, to where they need to be, and back.

The locals, and today, me.

I ask them if they’d like to have dinner with Luca and I tonight. They can’t. They have been invited to the house of the local Balinese family who does their laundry.

I thank them for inviting me to sit with them.

Julia and Anne Marie laugh easily, and whenever they look at each other, they smile.

“If we don’t see you again, have a beautiful quest, Ilana.”

They must know, now, that they have become one of my stories. I know I have become one of theirs. The girl who appeared in their living room, and emanated all her dreams. And they, the lovers who lived a life they could believe in, and emanated all their love and intelligence everywhere they went.

This morning, when I decided to cede to my urge to go for a walk down that path I had not yet walked, outside my villa, past the restaurant, and to the right, into the rice paddies, into the green, into the shadow curve from where local women carrying water bottles and cement and cardboard boxes on their heads seemed to stream… when I stepped out into the world in this way and felt a tightening in my chest, I knew I was looking for something.

I found it in Julia and Anne Marie. They have fortified me, at least for this day. And in case I start to forget, I am writing this story.

There are reasons to live with compassion, and reasons to wait for love, and reasons to believe in the magic of the world.

There’s no guarantee that when you open your eyes each day, that you won’t close your eyes a slightly different person that very same evening. And when you go for a walk on a quiet, overcast morning in Ubud, you have to be prepared to let the potential for change trickle in.

First Post: Where am I?

I start this journey on a different footing than those first steps I took on October 1, 2007. Perhaps because my pain is less, the questions that drive me seem to have less justification. Perhaps because the pressing absence of career, home and partner were brought into focus during three months in Melbourne, my spiritual longings have come into question as a form of escape.

I did not mention my reservations to anyone back home. Why add fuel to such a typical and convenient point of view.

So I bound my volition to a memory of certainty, and then with characteristic debilitated determination, I packed my backpack and boarded the flight.

first stop, thailand

And now from the road I must ask, is this a continuation of my Journey Always Waiting, or is this a somewhat separate Part II? Am I starting up where I left off, or has the dilution of last Journey’s lessons by the ordinary life in between deposited me at a new drop-in point, a place somewhat estranged from the fertile grounds I was ready to harvest?

Does this Journey need a new name?

I have friends who would tell me to stop thinking about it. That it’s really of no consequence whether I am continuing, or starting again. That these are technicalities, and distractions from the only reality of true importance here… that I have taken off on a personal journey of one year, and that I am free to make of it what I wish.

They would say that the best story is the one that lies ahead, and that I do not need, nor should I want, to define it now. That I should realize what a rare and incredible gift I have given myself, and that I should walk forward with eyes and heart open, and not look back.

They are right, of course, although in an idealistic, liberated from the bench, sort of way.

For all its exhilaration, unlocking the potential of a year’s growth at this stage of my life is no trivial thing. Taking a year out to Quest is an uncalculated risk, with uncertain outcomes on the other side. I step into the light of possibilities prepared to accept that what I learn may influence the rest of my life. I realize that what I am looking for out here, may guide, or confuse me, forever.

But, why must I take it all so seriously, my friends would ask.

second stop, china

Obviously, I have a tendency towards serious analysis of almost anything. I also skew left brain in my weaknesses and right brain in my strengths. I am also overly hard on myself, and tend to feel gravely responsible for faults and offences that most others simply write off as par for the socio-emotional course.

Guilty.

But knowing this about myself gives me something valuable to work on. Acknowledging how I am feeling, particularly when the reasons for these feelings are self-defeating, is a form of self-awareness that provides a baseline for development.

And that’s why it’s important for me to understand why I feel like I do, as I start this next phase of my Journey Always Waiting. In part – in large part – so I can chart my progress.

Last year, this was somewhat easier. I set out on October 1, 2007 in total possession of my moment in time, and with acute awareness of what had passed, and why, and of how much I wanted to feel and learn of myself and of the world. For these reasons, arriving at my Final Post five months later was one of the most significant crossings of my life.

third stop, indonesia

This time, things are a little blurrier. I have a nagging sense of skirting professional development. And am anxious that after two years of living in this way, that I will have become irreversibly unconventional, horrified by the sham of work with weekends, and unable to commit to a job or a city for long enough to become stable.

There’s really no reason to disagree with me. These are all highly reasonable outcomes.

However, I am not driven by a desire to be highly reasonable. And I am also not interested in acting out of fear or insecurity.

The unknown is only frightening because it is unknown… not because there is really anything out there to fear.

So, while it’s fair enough that my social conditioning is doing what it is programmed to do, my impulse to pacify it is not more valuable than my impulse to ignore it.

Because what I learned on my last trip is that what I do with my vast range of impulses, is entirely up to me.

I can choose.


And so I have chosen to continue on this Journey, to deepen and expand the lessons of my last trip; which through their deep impact on me, have already begun to change the authority from which I operate...

• i alone am responsible for my thoughts, for my actions (including reactions), and for the life I choose to live.
• the deepest and most lasting happiness is the experience of serving others, not yourself.
• compassion is without any doubt the path to happiness, and away from anger.
• the peace that I seek will elude me for as long as I lack loving kindness for myself.
• it requires discipline, hard work and deep honesty to understand the mind, which is for me the most interesting subject in the world.
• oh… and I should take it easy, because there’s really not much in this world I can predict or control.

and so, with trust in myself and love for the unknown, I open myself to the road once more.

and in writing all this down, actually, the answer to my question has emerged crystal clear.

this journey does not need a new name. it is my Journey Always Waiting.

really, all of it, even the time in between. it feels so natural, I must have always had it coming. but that’s a different conversion…

so, welcome back to my Journey Always Waiting.

now I know where I am. now, I can go…

Final Post: The Journey Never Ends

1978

today is the 18th of february, 2008. a little over three months since my last post. it seems entirely impossible, like something i would comfortably deny were the calendar not here before my eyes.

but it is february 18th, 2008.

so...

where have i traveled in this time? where have i been? and where have i arrived?

almost 10 years ago i did a road trip across america, crossing from the east coast to the west coast and back again in an enormous circle with two girlfriends. to keep expenses down we drove other people's cars, delivering vehicles to their owners who had moved interstate. each place we dropped off a car, we picked up a new one.

for one month we drove, and the road was almost always straight. sure, there were turns we took, there was some weaving, some wavering as well. but the experience was one of driving always onwards, and the pervasive image in my mind of that trip is of a straight and endless open road, wide beneath our wheels and narrowing out somewhere far in the distance, at a point which we never reached.

perhaps the seed of an insight was planted then and is only ripening now, a decade later. the insight that while life seems to be a linear journey, that in fact it is a circular one.

that just as i left new york city and drove in a straight line only to arrive back in new york city one month later, so it is with all our journeys, internal and external, large and small. even the wildest road trip of all - life itself - is a journey like this, seemingly progressing through age and time, but in reality moving always from dust to dust.

for a couple of days now, T.S. Elliot's words have been purring in my chest:

we shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time

and so it is.

every journey, and every experience within that journey, is not a departure from where you were or an arrival to somewhere new, but rather it is an awakening to something you always were; and at its best, it is a becoming of something more that you could be.

we leave home and become a stranger until on some distant shore we feel at home again; we leave love and survive loneliness and fear only to recreate love anew; we travel far and go deep only to arrive back at a place we never left... our own selves.

in the past four months, i have been in nepal, thailand, vietnam and america. i have lived in a monastery, a hostel, a bungalow, a luxury resort and a white picket fence house in suburbia. i have walked, climbed, rafted, peddled, jumped, danced and sat very still. i have studied yoga, studied tantra and studied buddhism. i have renounced sex, drugs and other distractions, and then un-renounced them all again in one day. i have spent precious time with close friends, and precious time with strangers, and precious time alone. i have experienced new levels of happiness and contentment, and i have fallen from grace and into instability. i have made many plans, and some of them i have forgotten, while others may change my life yet.

i have traveled far in the world, but much further in myself. and while i set out wanting every day to get further away from where i started, i see now that my final destination was inside me all along.

and so as i walk through these final days before i return home, i feel unbelievably blessed to understand that i have ultimately arrived exactly where i started...

and know the place for the first time.

because here, at the beginning, there is a new possibility to merge who I have been with who I could be. to infuse the creative and the practical, with the truth-seeking and the spiritual.

and to for the first time truly acquaint myself with, well, my self.

and at the center of all my development is a new awareness of my relationship with my mind.

through teachings, meditation, reflection and some field testing, I understand now that my life will be what my thoughts make it. i don’t mean I understand it with my intelligence. i mean my whole being has understood it, and a new destiny for me now feels possible.

i can see now how my thoughts, which i habitually worship and then dismiss, are actually the vehicle to every place I do, and don’t, want to be. and that understanding where they come from - the mind - is the key to everything mystical and everything practical, at the same time.

and so, knowing my mind is the greatest influence I can have over my destiny. and it is also the closest I can come in this life to the divine.

this is what traveling has taught me. this is what love has taught me. this is what the buddhists have taught me. this is what my divorce has taught me. this is what retuning to australia has taught me. this is what starting a company has taught me. this is what fear and joy have taught me. this is what yoga has taught me. this is what the sea has taught me. and airports. and the himalaya. and hedonists. and shamans. and taoists. and the ordained. and the completely lost. and the seekers. and the drifters. and the nihilists. and the believers.

and my reflection in the mirror.

because some days i feel beautiful, and others like a wilted flower, like something to put away. some days i am brimming with promise and plans, and others i feel destined for an average, pedestrian existence. some days i meditate peacefully and fruitfully, while others i wrestle with shadows and emerge exhausted, having lost.

everything, all of it, comes only from my mind.

meaning as i emerge from these travels, i no longer blame my skin, or my body, or my meditation pillow, or the DJ, or Thai airways, or my health, or my parents, or my failed marriage, or anything that exists outside of my own thoughts, for what I make of my life.

i would like, without judgment, to take responsibility for all of it.

but please, do not misunderstand me. i am not (by a long shot) suggesting that i am no longer susceptible to external forces. i absolutely am, and pathetically so. like a leaf in the wind, i will allow myself to be pushed around by all manner of things.

but what i am suggesting is that maybe i have found a way of binding that leaf more tightly to its stem, and so maybe now, although that leaf still flutters and tears, it is no longer so easily blown away.

maybe.

and also, maybe not yet.

but it is a great journey i have traveled to understand that this strength can come. and that i need nothing and no one else to create this change in myself. that the two things that i want most in this life – to find peace inside myself, and to live in a meaningful way – rely not at all on external forces, but rather in entirety on how my own mind works.

T.S. Eliot continues…

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

"not known, because not looked for… but heard, half-heard… in the stillness between two waves and the sea."

so much for me has been half-heard. but I am looking now. and what I see, is beautiful.