Winding Road Around this Wanton World!

Paro, Bhutan:  when silence becomes tangible....as spruce trees, a quiet valley and the baby blue sky!! September, 2012

There were prayer flags everywhere, an indication of constant communication with the divine!! Chalela, Paro Bhutan, 2012.

So, I was not sure whether I was going to write about this whole process of taking two months of unpaid leave. 

This blog is my way of documenting whatever does not get written in my personal journal.  In addition, it has been hard to write regularly in my journal, due to time and mind clutter.  I try to write, partly to remember incidents that we tend to forget even though they add to the richness of life, partly to document how one feels walking through life when goals and interests seem to have faded away.  But mainly to share the thoughts and musings that might bring the readers an understanding that despite wars, despite crime, despite corruption, it is a beautiful world.  That our happiness is linked with personal happiness.  That charity starts at home.  And a calm in our inner self is crucial to us engaging in the outside world.

Despite being in media, I stopped watching news about 8-10 months ago.  I am cut off from the world. I have not followed the election drama in the US, I am unaware of what is going on Sweden, although Swedish News for me serves and instructional purpose.  Staying away from NPR has been hard….but…..

There is no interest in saving the world, when I seem to be drowning often times.  And the news, I have realized does not understand the poetry of the world.  It is couched in negativity and flanked by TV shows that make a mockery of human relations.

My friends used to call me a home-body.  In many ways, I still am.  But there is a restlessness, that makes me feel that I need to be somewhere else, all the time.

It started when I first left home, at a strange age.  You step out of your teens and leave.  Partly as an escape from-- tradition that you love.  You feel it will bind you.  And also that there is not enough freedom in the way tradition is presented.  An opportunity arises and you respond. 

You do not realize that leaving at that age, when your memories of your ‘own land’ are barely a decade long will mess you up.  We do not remember much about the first decade of our life.  Then as a corollary to you spending your adult life outside of where your childhood was spent, something else shifts.  All your conscious memories are of lands where you were adjusting yourself—always in transition.  It brews a restlessness in you.  You celebrate your holidays but only as a side thought since no one else around is celebrating.   Your holiday spirit remains contained, and seems odd. People around you ask--Why are you dressed up today?  Why buy all these sweets? 

Its like celebrating Christmas in a communist country.  A lone tree, sad lights, and no glow of lights from neighboring houses.

Emotionally and romantically not many interest you, not many can match or understand that restlessness, not many want to live at that edge, not many can be your home, since your home is spread far and wide.  You are not a loner, or lonely, because you make friends.  You are alone, since in this line of life, on this route, all travellers have their own stories, while many overlap, points of convergence are few.

But since you are young, you leave.  You want to see beyond the horizon.  You have your whole life ahead.  You do not want to foresee, for there is time.  You leave your own shore.  Only the new shore, does not appear.  When waters get turbulent you look back and cannot see the city/place you left from. 

After that you hold your breath for life to return to normal, like people your age.  At some point.  If not now, may be tomorrow.  That tomorrow never arrives.  And you are left wondering if your goal now is only to enjoy the sunrises and not hope. 

Personally, I get angry when I read all this globalization literature.  I am stuck in that whirlpool and do not appreciate these scholars even pretending that they understand what it feels like.    Visas, money, security, future, nothing is clear.  An exchange of a meaningful conversation is where one rests.   No place is home and yet every place calls you.

The one thing that I have and can count on is that, now for the last decade and a half I have had really good friends.  There was a long dry spell of not having that either.  But I do now.  A consistency.  (I will write else about my return to Sweden, and how it was different from when I returned to the US—this ultra cold country felt warm due to my friends—something that hardly happened in the US.  No one ever emailed or asked or checked on my while I was away.  I did not exist!!).

And the readers will know what friendship means to me.  It is the joining of the heart.  Not two emails a year.  But someone who interacts with you on several levels.  Emails, calls, visits, skype, postcards, and occasional packages.  But most of all, the conversations and interactions are not about discussing, ‘oh I went there, I did this…’  but a genuine asking and telling of ‘how am /are  -- I/you feeling.’   And then to listen.  With our friends, we know their hearts.  We know their state of mind.  Other friendships then come in varying degrees.

I have some of the best people in my life. Name a continent, name a nationality, I probably know people from there.  That I consider a compliment to myself!!  That is my wealth.

And yet, the question remains what to do with your condition, when it isn’t where you wanted to end up?

When you look around and think well, ‘Yeh daag daag ujala, Yeh woh sahar to nahin….’ (a line from a very famous line from a very famous Indian, now Pakistani poet---‘This stained daylight, this was not the morning/ destination I had hoped for’-- This tattered raiment of darkness. 
This sputtering of dawn.
This is not the dawn that we had hoped for.
This is not the dawn we had set out for).

People go through midlife crisis at 40.  Mine came at 18, and has stayed with me ever since.  In between there have been moments of clarity. 

Teaching at Penn State was my highlight.  Indiana and Clarion were good too, but Penn State was another dimension.  I have never had that peak again. 

Writing, which is important in my field, comes easy to me.  Just not academic writing.  I write, and I never send them out.  Or just before the deadline I back out.  There were times when I wanted to throw up (literally) in the middle of academic writing.  That is the deep resistance I have to this way of communicating with the world. 

If that can be called communicating with the world?

My dissertation was on environmental activism.  I killed nearly 20 trees writing it.  What with edits and rewrites.  And every environmental summit the delegates eat, drink, and leave without any solid decision-making. 

Did I or others like I make any dent? 

Years of work on Media Effects and I am amazed at what gets produced at MTV, and worse how it reaches countries like Fiji and Botswana?

So this trip, I have thrown caution to the wind and am spending so much.  I knew I needed it.  I hardly spend time and money on myself.  A realization that has come to me in the last year.  My resources are always about, that person’s birthday, this one’s anniversary, let me call that relative, this friend…..

Years of being away from home, I still call my relatives.  Not just my parents and sibblings.

But again, that is my way of keeping continuity.  The reward is that now I know my nieces and nephews who grew up in the decade that I never visited home.  and many of them I had not seen since I first left home.

I went back and 3 year olds had turned 18, and were a head and shoulder taller than I.  When some of them came to touch my feet, not only did I scream but realized I had to deal with the shock that now I commanded some respect of age as well.  I was still young and yet there were these youngsters, my blood, who had no knowledge of me. 

I have been returning home, or to the place where I grew up, once a year in the last 8-9 years.  I have restored that connection and in some way am ready for a break.

In many ways I know ‘something has crossed over and I cannot go back’ ( A famous line from Thelma and Louise).

But for this trip, I knew that I had no plans.   At first I thought I wanted to spend two months in India, since I will get to spend Dusshera and Diwali, the two main festivals in India.  Also October is one of the most pleasant months in Delhi. I could get more footage for the documentary that I have in mind. 

But what I really wanted to do was volunteer.  There was a peace project in San Diego, writing about peace activists that was paid.  A student of mine had told me about it.  But I declined, since that would mean work.

I needed some free time to make some decisions.  My last five to six years have been hectic.  Dealing with life, life issues, looking back trying to piece a life that I am not sure I created or wanted.  Also, I have moved continents three times in this time period.

But there have been moments of light, when I look at it and I see clear.  The falls and the failures are the things to be proud of.  Some times it seems like there is a plan, an organization. I am just frustrated that I do not understand.

This is to tell all those who struggle with these issues, that most of us are in this whirlpool--together.  Those who think they are not, are not contemplating the real questions.  Most have no time since they have the luxury of being sold to the images provided in ads and movies.  Ah, love and family.  So easy to talk about and replicate in images. 

But the changes in the world happen and emerge from those who are restless.  Who seek change.  But more importantly, who are actually caught up in the revolution.  With or without a conscious intention.

So, for me, this has been a winding road.

And I have had many companions on the way.  Most of them are companions for a short while.  The real conversations I have had are, either short quick ones in classes, where I make sure my students take some questions with them, with my dear friends who function at the same level, and the travellers.  Those who have acknowledged that their home and heart is an idea, often a fleeting one!! So we see ourselves in people who reflect our own condition. 

If we are awake/Buddhas in the making then we have the courage to acknowledge it all.

On this winding road, this time, taken deliberately I had no idea what I was doing.  I wanted to go woofing, volunteer, teach, rest, not think, cut off from the world, read, write, paint, walk, run, meditate, sing, go to India take classes in Vedic philosophy, spend time in Latin America working with children’s television, go to the US and work with this research group that I admire, go bike riding everyday,

In essence, I wanted to be everywhere. 

But I chose Asia. 

I thought I would backpack through South East-Asia like I did three years ago.  But by the time I arrived in Thailand, I was tired.  Heat wears me out.  And I realized that the thought of carrying my bag every few days looking for a place to stay, trying to see how to enter and exit a country was not what I wanted.

I met L from Germany in Bangkok, at the backpackers. I took to her immediately.  She had a cute chubby face, that exuded joy.  We got to know each other only for two days, but it felt like a deep connection.  One of those travellers who gave meaning to travels.

The day she left, I found a note in my wardrobe.  A beautiful note from her that talked about how she felt when we talked and it had a 1000 kyatt, Burmese currency.  Burma was a place I wanted to go.  And so in some ways that was a sign.

Then, I met a gentleman from India in Thailand on my way to Ko Chang, who when I talked about my interest in Bhutan said, ‘ Oh you can go easy, all the visa stuff there is for westerners mainly.’

Really, I thought?

Ko Chang was loud.  The best thing about that was meeting these two cute young Chinese girls. 

On my return to Bangkok I met M from Netherlands, and reconnected with M from Germany.  Another one where we sat down and felt like we were meant to meet.  Hindu and Buddhist beliefs are based on this ideology that when we meet and the interaction is intense, it is from a past life connection.  I must have had millions (not a compliment) since turn around of people in my life has been enormous. 

I must have had numerous lives, because I have many of those heart to heart connections where I am left wondering where do I know these people from?

I think on our winding road, we meet people from our past lives.

The night before I left I talked with two young men.  Both 21, one from UK and the other, part Thai kid, from guess where?  Yes Sweden!!

We talked well into the night since my flight was at 4 am.

I left Thailand with peace and excitement in my heart. 

At the airport I met this bunch of Taiwanese people, I will put their picture up as well.  A happy group of people.  Including an 82 year old matriarch. 

I met this wonderful young woman and her daughter in the plane.  She spoke fluent hindi.  I had been told that Bhutanese people speak very good hindi.  Partly because they share a border with India, and partly due to Bollywood.

The moment I arrived in Bhutan I started laughing.  Like a mad person.  It was pleasant, clean, gorgeous and pretty much soundless.  Except the construction sounds and stray dogs.  I knew I did right by me!!

Although my blog entries are all sporadic and come out of time, I will try to write the next few blogs, just about Bhutan, as I truly intend to write about this beautiful country and its policies that are geared toward fiercely protecting its culture.  I will try and put them under the category of Bhutan and/or winding roads. 

But in this one, in this long one where I have bared my heart, hoping that those who struggle with ‘existence and meaning’ will find some solace that they are not alone, I wanted to write about how sometimes things happen magically---and that we should be open to it.

Pay attention to the signs and signals that bring us messages.

On the winding roads around this wanton world…..there are many things and people that bring us messages.  I hope and pray we learn to be open to them.  And at the risk of preaching mumbo-jumbo, I think we should teach children at school to be on the look out for messages that help us deal with this wanton world..