new year boredom

Greetings,

It's the new year here.

People get together, celebrate, travel home for three days to their village if they have cash and places get cleaned up. Everything increases in cost; food, transportation, quietly depressed bar girls, medicine, education, laziness and boredom. Boredom was cheaper last week in a free market economy. 

In front of the ornate French colonial court house teams of boys chew up old soil removing dead tree trunk roots with crude effective Paleolithic stone tools slabbing the area with miles of bland red tiles. The amount of stone work is tremendous. Across the street at a government building boys slap a fresh coat of white paint on pillars. Women weed a grassy plaza featuring a huge seagull. It needs a coat of paint.

White shirted men supervise garden teams and completion of tall heroic patriotic statues at an intersection. 

Boys rapidly pave a huge swath of land in front of a new grocery store with red tiles. The owners brought in outdoor fern planters and steel shelving for consumer goods no one will want.

Frantic men salvage gutter weeds and wild grasses for their livestock before someone chases them away. A young girl tries to focus on copying texts under the watchful eye of a private tutor while adults with a lack of focus and direction distract them with meaningless chatter.

Countless people with nothing to do practice the endless art of milling around. They practice the timeless art of pretending to be busy. They pay more attention to see if anyone is watching them than to what they are actually doing. This is an unpleasant fact.

Across the street from a small place where I enjoy noodles, carrots, spuds, eggs and fine green tea, boys in straw hats protecting them from a blistering sun create four new rooms with high brick walls at a primary school. No windows. Window dressing. A new year, a new wall. 

Metta.

Vietnam

Turkey

Shaman - Vietnam

One River

Greetings,

One key to survival in the jungle is to be silent. Patient. Move slowly.

A stranger goes for a bike ride on a dusty red potholed road. Very common, these roads. It runs parallel to a river.

Locals stare and then forget. They are busy trying to find food.

He's been been on this river before. The river in the world and other places. It winds past simple bamboo thatched homes. There are one, perhaps two rooms. Wood floor. The rear opens to the river. They have wells for drinking, washing, bathing. If the home's on stilts, the lower area is for hammocks, resting in the shade, family gatherings and eating.

Palm trees line the road. Plastic bags litter the river and adjacent patches of dry unproductive soil. He sees one garden. It's large and fenced off with barb wire, wood slats, fragmented sticks and string. The vegetables are bright green and strong. 

Rare middle class glass and brass stone homes scream "We are rich!" They are monsters with stone front yards, weird plastic toy animals, high cement walls, sharp lancer fences and imposing gates. Protection from whom or what? Bored butterflies? Machete wielding lizards?

Metta.

They discuss love and space travel.

A Little Letter

(Editor's note: A version of this recently went out to friends and strangers.)

I've shifted into a new peaceful space after sharing another house with a very sad young teacher, a father of a young girl who lives with her mother in Mongolia. His favorite expression was, "Let's Eat!"

I mentioned choices and consequences but he didn't hear or listen. I've seen this reality before, mind you. He must have figured it was worth the emotional cost to come here. As someone along the rocky road whispered, "Any fool can have a kid. It takes courage to raise them." You gotta pay your dues someplace.

I've been planting amazing flowers, including thirty from the old space, trees, shrubs, a delicious herb garden and multiple seeds; cleaning and refocusing my healing energies.  

I am west of Jakarta, about an hour plus toll trolls by taxi depending on the traffic, which can be a real nightmare due to poor urban highway planning ten years ago. The city pollution is real killer. You can feel it in your throat and eyes. Ghastly. All east-west traffic must pass through the city center. No ring roads. Duh.

The air quality out here is very good and the area, while consisting of 20-30 flower named walled clusters with guards at the entrance, has plenty of trees and tropical flora. Beautiful butterflies, song birds, cockroaches, big brown beady eyed rats, contemplative speckled frogs and many little humans. It's all about evolution, adjusting and adaptation.

Some homes are McMansions with Greek and Roman columns featuring Ironic, Corinthian fax paux decorations screaming "Yes, look at my huge monster home! I made it." I imagine many palatial rooms are empty, collecting dust, but hey, like in China, it's all about external appearances. Goes to show ya. Others are more tastefully done in the one-two story cookie-cutter style. 

Everyone has a maid from somewhere in Java, some being barely old enough to take care of spoiled pampered offspring. They wash two cars, sweep and water stone passages, cook, wash clothes, clean and feed the kids while both parents are out busy making money. It's a job. 

It's an opportunity to make money to support their families in a village memory. Most, if not all, returned home for a brief holiday. Some may return, others will take their place. It's the never ending human supply system on one of 17,000 islands with 220 million people.

It's interesting to see moms and dads washing cars doing laundry and preparing meals these days. Learn by doing.

Food is cheap here. Medicine and education is expensive. Favorite sports are: 

1) driving huge 4x4s where gas costs $2.40 a gallon, sitting in endless long traffic jams, paying parking fees to para-military type uniformed men blowing stainless steel whistles...  

2) wandering around enormous numerous (say it fast three times) shopping centers. Like a huge playground for young and old kids. Where out-of-control rascals can expend their pent-up energy. Where families can enjoy the A/C and stuff behind glass. Museum quality of life. Diversionary influences.

3) whining. My students know and understand this behavior is boring and useless.

The private school has 1,800 students from kindergarden through high school. It's existed since 1993 and was started by a Catholic priest from Bandung who joined with community leaders to promote education. We have native English teachers in K-12 to complement the friendly local teachers. They've seen us folks come and go after completing a two-year contract. The school administration is very professional in all aspects. 

My supervisor, the Director of English, is a anthropologist from New Hamster. She was formerly a tenured professor at a stateside east coast university and threw it all off (the job, big house, marriage, mortgage, cars and airplanes) for the overseas life. She has extensive international teaching experience and focuses on curriculum development. I've learned a great deal from her in a short time. We are kindred spirits. 

I'm teaching 4th grade (where I act like a big nine) and really enjoying the opportunity to make a positive contribution. My kids are amazing and we have fun in/out of class. There is more prep-time and lesson planning here compared to the Wall Street Institute system (0 prep = loads of free time) but it's a fine exchange, all things considered.

I have three classes of 30 kids and see each class four times a week for 70 minutes each class. This allows us to fully explore Socratic academic text-based material, (speaking, listening, reading comprehension and writing) personal creative journal writing, art, and teamwork projects. 

We focus on developing character, sharing, good manners, soft eyes, relaxation, meditation, making mind maps, accepting personal responsibility and exploring the learning process. I assist them in developing critical thinking skills and thinking out of the box. 

I tell them, "I am here to help you make mistakes." Shock reality therapy.

I accompany each class to the fine library once a week. They are improving their research skills. To get to the paper library we meander through the eco-library where we also spend a lot of time exploring, discovering and finding cool things. 

I'm also mentoring an English club of 18 students culled from 4th-6th grade for their speaking ability. They practice improving their public speaking skills and having fun. I'm also assisting the editor of a biweekly "Flash" newsletter which goes out to parents. Performing copy and proofreading stuff.

I use a Cosmic mountain bike and it's all flat land. I do miss the rolling wild nature near the Chinese university and quality of bike life there. Still, it's fun and necessary. I play tennis at the sports center 2-3 times a week in a drop-in doubles format with local businessmen and swim in the beautiful Olympic size pool which is often deserted. 

Next door is a Balinese Spa where I enjoy a 1.5 hour traditional full body massage weekly for $12. I alternate between the traditional - relaxation, aroma therapy - and the hot rock massage which is a strange deep tissue feeling after warm oil coats you and then the oval volcanic rocks blend into your epidermis. After a week of teaching, riding, tennis and laughing the massage is a welcome therapeutic relaxation zone. Bliss. 

Metta.

Travel transience

Yes and thanks for your patience while I was in transit, exploring new visions and shifting my base of exploration. Indonesia is where I sit down now to continue my work.

Transience is the only reality.

I have a lot to share with you, enough for a story, a long prose poem, or an in depth podcast, yes, a verbal sound bite. 

So, would you like the short version or the long version?

A short segment: packaging. Airline tin foil wrapped around hot strange food at 29,000 feet is a challenge. Keep your elbows in so you don't disturb Mr. Sleepy next door. He is a cook on a cruise ship based in Europe and returning home to Jakarta for a brief holiday with family and friends. 

Light sandle wood incense. Step out onto the front porch before dawn and communicate with a trilling bird. Whistle a song. Listen and repeat. Say hello to a large brown meditative frog sitting near a flowering species of tropical plant with red flowers for a hat. 

By now I have been to many gardens and collected 20+ flowering plants with exotic names for indoor and outdoor growth and beauty. I am living in a tropical paradise. Orchids are amazing and reasonably priced. I love the feeling of dirt. It is a hard packed red clay variety. I dig and plant, dig and plant. I water after dark, after a day of blazing heat. The flowers and plants appreciate this kindness.

After a week of teacher training I get a shiatsu massage. A girl walks on my spinal chord. It's a real alignment.

I found a new COSMIC mountain bike, helmet, front and rear lights, lock, and magic bell. The music is crisp and clear. The echo sends a pulse and signal and waves across the universe. The Tibetan bells are answering in their distinctive well calibrated tonal language.

"Maid" girls wash cars and sweep dust. Someone clangs a metal utensil on a wok and roll preparing breakfast. Wild roaming cats climb into curbside trash containers, lose their balance and spill the contents. Suburban people own two cars. They start one and leave it idling. A mosquito whispers, "I need blood." A flickering candle illuminates their probing sensitivity.

You remember a small story Zeynep shared while on the ferry across blue water to Istanbul. "Before we are born we know everything, then, when we are born, after being born, we forget everything because of the pain." 

Should I say something here about all the tourists wearing flip-flops in Istanbul? Perfect for the terrain; old Roman stones, inlaid mosaic tiles and wheelchairs. How, as their day progresses they gradually become worn out, tired, bored and sullen? Perhaps. 

One day at breakfast on the garden terrace overlooking the Bosporus filled with tankers, ferries and sailboats a chemistry teacher from Pittsburgh said, "Our daughter is 15. She says traveling is hard work." His wife, thinking about leaving for Israel to see friends and a seminar in physics added, "Somewhere in India is a man carrying the world on his back."

"Yes," said a linguistic gardener, "We are sanctifying a finite space in an infinite universe."