Kuala Lumpur is hot. The humid air smells of spice and perfume and swirling fans carry the music of voices in a language unknown  to me.

KL is suprisingly green and chilled, pockets of tropical parks in the centre of the city and quiet. Not at all the chaotic Bangkokian metropolis that I was expecting.

But it still possesses the Asian style chaos that I find so deeply appealing: the hand of history peeling back the paint, the touch and wear of time, of lives, and unfinished futures hanging in the air.


The large shopping centre next door to my hostel was ground floor America : Borders, Esprit, Western Union, 7 Eleven...



but as the floor numbers grew things changed. By floor five I was being accosted by people wanting to unleash feet eating fish upon me.



and by floor seven.... a full size indoor rollercoaster.. whoah.


But I was headed straight for a massage : my first  in six months. I have been so consumed and overtaken by loss and unexpected, unwanted change in my life, that I've built up  twisted bundles of suffering in my muscles.  The pain the Malaysian woman's hands untwisted from my back and (unexpectedly) the back of my legs was quite simply insane.



and there's much more untwisting to come on this holiday road....

Excellent and intriguing reviews of Rebecca Solnit's “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” inspired me to find a copy for my travels.  For what better companion can there be for a traveller, than a field guide to getting lost? And indeed, even more than I anticipated, its  a profoundly resonating read.

Her first chapter unfurls a spiral of musings grounded in a question posed by pre-Socratic philosopher Meno: “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” (p 4). This, she suggests, might be a “basic tactical question” for life. For, “the things we want “ she writes “are transformative, and we don't know or only think we know” what they will look like.  “Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration – how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?” (p 5)

With one foot always resting in the unknown, Solnit  ties  philosophical questions of being 'Who am I?' ,'What am I doing here?'  with questions such as 'What is it to love?'.  As a relational being this wondering after who I truly am and how I develop and grow, through another, through others, and  perhaps most deeply through the fires of love, is very pertinent.

With blissful synchroncity (for me) she turns to Keats' concept of  'Negative Capability'. This was a slogan of Naropa's University's writing program which I attended in 2004.  I was much enamoured by it, if unsure of its absolute meaning. I think now that it is best carried, as with the best of philosophy,  as a question.

Keats writes of an epiphany he had whilst out walking – the  realisation that people of great achievement have “the quality of Negative Capability”:“capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” ( p6). I am greatly drawn to this liminal space, the mysterious beauty of that which is betwixt and between, yet find this nigh on impossible in matters of the heart. 

My heart wants to be fully and certainly met in its offering of an open and vulnerable Yes, or otherwise concealed behind the impenetrable iron curtain of No. Yet, certainly this is where the great fire of transformation is for me, to learn to remain fully open in the face of Great Doubt, to stay without collapsing towards resolution.

Great Doubt as expressed in the Zen teaching of  Hakuin is conscious relaxation inside uncertainty, rest inside the paradox of neither this nor that. It is one of those teachings which has, in true koan style, stayed with me ever since it was offered as a teaching to the group of dharma walkers with whom I rested in the shade of a French forest . It has sat deeply and quietly in the confusions of my heart and now wakes to whisper to me again of a bigger way.

Barn's burnt down --
now
I can see the moon.


Masahide

I would love to be able to claim these as self portraits.
They are such beautiful paintings while also so sumptuously and profoundly symbolic.
The symbolism of trapped, decorative and free birds in these works is particularly resonant for my golden haired self at the moment : the image of birds as a metaphor for the self,  the freedom for flight as the opening of those twisted, calcified parts of myself to growth and deeper expression.

 I was speaking to a friend about my desire to paint birds, and that night dreamt a flock circled inside the room as I slept in bed,  and I felt the feathers of their wings caress my face.

They are the work of Steven Kenny.

I've started reading a gorgeous book by Sena Jeter Naslund that I was lucky enough to find on the shelf of a second hand bookshop here in Ubud, Bali.

I love picking up random books while travelling. Years ago, I found John Steinbeck's Cannery Row on a book swap shelf of a hostel in Turkey, and it totally broke me open and blew me away. I class the experience of reading it among some of the most sigificant experiences of my life.

Today, I read a wonderful passage in Ahab's Wife, in which the heroine, Una, recovers from a lightning flash that has temporarily blinded her:

“The simple colors I knew with their names and incarnations … delighted me.  The hues that have no name even more charmed my eyes.  I saw tones of gray, when a cheek was in shadow, or tones of yellow, or pink at the flanges of the nose; I noted the way the violet of my aunt's blouse reflected under her chin.  The many colors in our food spoke to me with joyful voices.  It was as though there  were landscape and vista enough to have pleased a Wordsworth in a spoonful of vegetable soup or in the stretched tent of shiny, whitish skin over a bent knuckle.

… I wanted … to reclaim my Island, my world, to my sight.  Not from the lofty height of the tower, but close to to things.  Antlike, I wanted to travel our paths, to look long and hard at the design of Queen Anne's lace, the long spurs of columbine.  Even the yellow cap of a dandelion delighted me, and how there was something greeny in the yellow.  The beach was littered with mussels, and I loved the bruised blue and the ridges of their shells... The light poured over the world like honey, and I wanted to see the breeze as well as feel it.  I watch the tiny hairs on my forearm ripple like the sea grass.  Whenever a wave withdrew, the million bubbles left behind, sinking rapidly into sand, tickled the corners of my eyes with iridescence.

I would store it all up; I would reclaim it if I ever was blind.  As I looked, I planned that in my bed, that very night, I would remember these colors and shapes, the distinctiveness of every part of nature.  Then I would rejoice again, like Wordsworth, with 'that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude.'  I was full of love for all that I saw.”    (p 95-6)

“Did you ever go home?”

“Home?” she chuckled.  “I have made my home wherever I am . A gimbaled bed, a maid's room, the howdah atop an elephant.” She stopped smiling, tilted her head back, and looked majestically at me over the bulges of her cheeks. “And I advise you to do the same.”

“I have lived in a lighthouse.”

“I know.”

“Before that, I lived in the woods...”

“I know.”

“I don't know which is more nearly home.”

“I know.”
With that, she heaved herself up from the windowsill.  Her skirts whispered their silk secrets as she passed, but I thought them to say, Welcome to the world.




image from ffffound

Returning some seven years later, I remember why my relationship with Bali was so ambivalent.

I'd forgotten really how very, very beautiful and lush it is. The tropical flowers, frangipanis, hibiscus, orchids, the gold and red carp swirling in ponds, the light caught in the palm trees, breeze rustling the green of green rice fields, and caressing me on the back of a scooter, the exquisite attention to detail of the aesthetic presentation.

And I'd forgotten its ulterior face: the broken sidewalks, the women and baby beggars, the desperate aggression of shopkeepers consumed by hungry ghosts, the noise of the motorbikes, and the rubbish fires.

A postcard from Sanginngan

if you follow the tramp of my thonged feet on this small dirt path you will not step in the puddles. skirt by the muddy edges. step to the side for passing motorbikes. children will peer out from houses. women will look up from scrubbing clothes on rocks by the stream to greet us. turning we wander past fields of greens and corn that ebb into the spreading terraces of rice, spotted with coconut, papaya. banana; rooster, hen and duck.

don't mind me if i lounge on the verandah watching butterflies dance with palms and orchids alike on the breeze that brings the rains. i am pondering the virtues of writing absent friends about the heat, the aesthetics of Ubud cafe society, of Bali life from three year old eyes, of lotus ponds and carp, of my quiet struggle with colonialism, of the vast and the domestic... but all of these subjects seem to melt away inconsequentially into the simple splendour of the afternoon.

Sarah Nicholson, 2002.

Just as Bali's essential nature seems unchanged, so is mine.
I sleep late, take long baths with sweet smelling salts, get massaged, do yoga, retreat from the buzz of the streets to swim, and lay by the pool watching the play of air and light across the rice fields and palms, to listen to the sound scape of insects feeding on sunlight, cocks crow, bells, rustle of fronds and what sounds like a call to prayer washed towards me on the breeze.

I read and read, and I write and write, and rest, and let myself soften, and get softer still.

I am quite in love with this remarkable book. I arrived in Bali with the desire to find a holiday read with depth and beauty, that would speak to me, sing, take flight by drawing me into its world to teach me about life and thus myself.   I spent a long time in the second hand book shop and it turns out that I chose well.


Ahab's wife follows an epic journey, the life of Una, wife to Captain Ahab, the nemesis of Moby Dick in Melville's classic. Making it thus, Naslund has enabled Una's reflection on the twists and turns of her own life path:

“I marvelled some (to myself) that I had known so little of my own course.  I had been like a ship, blown about in dark and storm, suddenly finding, beyond all hope, that the dawn illuminated the port of home.” (p 363)

Una's life's path is textured by travel, adventure, religion, intellect, literature, the joy of nature and domestic arts. And Naslund lays much emphasis on love through exploring many meetings of hearts and minds through  friendship, family and romance.

It is little wonder that I identify strongly with Una, she is a wonderfully drawn heroine and a classic one, in the sense of Joseph Campbell's heroes.  From her beginnings in the woods of Kentucky  as a young girl she challenges her father's Christian fundamentalism with “you can not order belief”, thus exiled she lives a simple, idyllic, nature-mystical life with her aunt and uncle,  New England lighthouse keepers.  Leaving them, she cuts her hair and pretending to be a boy, boards a whaling boat seeking to feel the bigness of the world.  Sailing into the seething oceans opens the way for majestic vistas of natural beauty, and in turn for great tragedy, violence and darkness.  Throughout all, Una's questioning mind and  spirit, contained and quietly graceful, is infused by an inner fire and steered with certitude. 

She has been holding a mirror for me, as I have been remembering myself on this journey, much reflecting on how I have come to this place in my life, remembering the girl I have been, a girl not unlike Una, alit with an adventurous and questioning spirit. A girl who shaved her head and wandered alone through strange and beautiful lands, who created ecosystems in sunflowers, who organised festivals, who wandered naked in the forest, who danced. I've been remembering her, gathering her up, holding her as I keep travelling down these paths; watching the road ever vanishing behind me, watching the road ever arriving, arriving.



I've been struggling  with the loss that death of relationship has brought me. I have come to see the potency of this energy and the way it signals the beginning of a new adventure. To pause too long, to mourn too deeply, is to refuse the call.  I have come to see how I am being called once again, but this time I know it, as I didn't before. I know that I am being called to grow, to peel back, to deepen, to allow grief and pain to burn right through me, to illuminate my dark corners, and to soften my heart.

I have found my own twists and turns mirrored in the fortutitous meetings, struggles, losses and tragedies of Una's life. While I would not myself use the paternal language of Christianity, passed through internal translation, this passage, directed to Una, floored me: it might have been to be spoken straight to me:

“Dwell not in the inner hell which is always of our own making.  Inside yourself you must give up the illusion of power.  That is God's realm.  Your life is like a vast ocean.  Can you control the tempest?  Can you make the sun shine?  'Twere naught but folly to think so.  Your despair comes from your struggle, from your vain belief that you order the sea of feeling.  ... Prayer is the shelter from despair; good works for others is the obligation of joy at home.  Meditate only on the glory of God, his magnificence, his kindness in the most ultimate sense, his ever-flowing forgiveness, his warm love.  Admit your lowliness before his plan.  Give up the illusion that you can order either your own life or Kit's turmoil.  Trust that Kit can find his way, according to the plan of God.  Look you only to your own way, which is in God.” (p 287)

While in Bali recently I had the good fortune to be able to drop in on a couple of Brian Johnson 's Philosopher Notes classes.

Brian's a lucid, articulate and intelligent teacher, who while exploring the Big Ideas of one text, wove insights from various Philosopher Notes texts together, to demonstrate the way thinkers from various disciplines arrive at similar points, and drew on his own experience to illustrate. As a result the Notes aren't cheap soundbites but skillfully extracted insights.

The last class I attended focused on The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. They  are:

• Be Impeccable with your speech,
  
• Don't Take Things Personally,
• Don't Assume, and
• Always Do Your Best
  

Simple and yet ...

At the moment Always Doing My Best involves 'practising' a bigger, more mature self.  I've been comtemplating the way practice means not perfect, means moving towards. Until my bigger self stabilises, doing my best means I am consciously 'practicing' it again and again, realising when I have fallen back into my smaller, young self, and recognising it, returning to 'practice', starting again...

The tides of life often leave me time-poor so I'm looking forward to more succint dharmic reminders from the Notes.  I like Brian and I respect what he is doing.. and I am all about finding ways to support each other in following our bliss.
So, my summary is - Philosopher's Notes... worth checking out.

This quote came from the Ocean of Dharma e-list. It is very much where I am finding, or orienting towards finding, myself in my practice at the moment.

"According to the ideas of my teacher, Jamgon Kongtrul, the only way to develop spiritual discipline is to accept chaos as well as orderliness. His suggestions are very profound and totally ecumenical. To develop genuine spirituality, one has to be dedicated to a contemplative approach, a meditative approach. That doesn't mean that everybody on this earth has to sit on a meditation cushion....We are not talking in terms of being good meditators. We are talking about actually, personally being able to identify with what you've studied, what you've heard, what you've learned, what you've read. It is bringing all of this into your personal experience."

From Talk One of "Jamgon Kongtrul," an unpublished seminar by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Boulder, Colorado, November 1974.

Ocean of Dharma list is complied by Carolyn Gimian