The suitcase

The suitcase this morning felt so familiar as I packed it, and my little dog, Bronwen, dropped down into depression when she saw it happening. The security lines, taking out my laptop and cell phone and keys, taking off my jacket and shoes, pulling out the sandwich bag of cosmetics; then rushing to throw it all back together and head down some long walkway, linoleum and stainless steel handrails, and windows that look out onto tarmac. On the plane, buckle up, air on, lights out, pull the window shade, put on the head phones. Off the plane and into the ladies room, where I find myself swaying in front of the mirror. No, I am not fainting. I'm a sailor!

What fun, I am still a sailor, and I hope I keep a little sailor inside forever.

Full Speed Ahead!

Did I ever mention that the MV Explorer is the fastest little cruise ship in the world? No kidding, she is. We did 31 knots on our way to Miami that last day? I celebrated by getting on the elliptical machine and going as fast as I could while the big blue flashed past.

Good preparation I suppose for this...LA this weekend, DC next week, Kernville next weekend, Sacramento the next week, Chicago the next week. Then back to LA for ten blessed weeks of terra firma. Or such is my fantasy.

Alternate Realities

Today I used car keys, and a debit card, and I grocery shopped, and cooked for the first time in four months. I have been without cell phone, without credit cards and debit cards, without car keys, without any keys. I remembered that shopping and cooking are laborious and time-consuming, and also satisfying and delicious. As I built up my stew, adding layer upon layer of ingredients, Elizabeth sighed and said "The house smells so good; it hasn't smelled like this in so long."

I have yet to unpack the suitcases and begin the laundry. Yes, I recall this reality, and it moves me away from that reality, where I did not swear, or whine, or vent my spleen, where I never missed anything I was supposed to be for any reason. Even sick I showed up and said "I'm sick so you might not get my best performance, but I am here."

Wonder what I will learn about being here; wonder what I might be able to do differently for having been there, there on the ship, there in South Africa, and Cambodia, there in Guilin and there on Mt. Koyasan, there on the equator, there on the international date line, there where the Southern Cross rides the horizon, there where I was rocked to sleep, there where the dark at night was deep and the silence a great cocoon in which to rest at night.

Rock n Roll in Emerald City

I am on land in the USA! Key West, Florida. The first thing I noticed pulling in to Miami is what a rich place this! Odd because it is not as glamorous as Hong Kong. It is not the glitz, but the width of the streets and the fact of landscaped median strips, and the clean and high functioning equipment and the smooth organization of life. Wow. Emerald City.

I have acquired a funny new characteristic which I will no doubt soon lose, but for the moment I sway quite a bit, literally and physically. I am not yet off the ship, though I have this staggering sense of having just been around the world. It feels bigger having done it than it did in the process of doing it.

Meanwhile, I look like I have some strange neurological syndrome and, in fact, that is exactly what I do have.

Woman Alive

I am reminded at journey's end of the G.K. Chesterton novel, Man Alive, that I found so compelling when I was my students' age. Innocent Smith is the character who goes around the world in order to find the life at home....

And, in the words of the poet Rumi:

Either this deep desire of mine
will be found on this journey,
or when I get back home.

It may be that the satisfaction I need
depends on my going away, so that when I have gone
and come back, I'll find it at home.

I will search for the Friend with all my passion
and all my energy until I learn
that I don't need to search.

If I had known the real way it was
I would have stopped all the looking around.

But that knowing depends
on the time spent looking.

Flying Fish, Make a Wish

The flying fish have been our constant companions. At first I thought they were birds and wondered how the little things managed to get way out to the middle of the ocean. Okay, I was no sailor. But now I am. These little fish shoot out of the water and spread their dorsal fins, which look for all the world like wings and they soar along the surface of the water for great lengths. Often half a dozen or so take to the air at the same time. Flying fish.

I wish for world peace. I wish to make good decisions. I wish to die knowing for sure that I lived. And, of course, this adventure is on the "oh how I have lived side of the scale." Back to world peace. I don't want to just wish for it, but to imagine with clarity and focus, to hold it in my heart in spite of the vulnerability of such radical hope, to work for it with my words, with my hands. World peace. "Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." This was our closing song at convocation tonight.

Kay Widdows, who gave the faculty address, described a series of Faure songs that express the sentiments of a young man who lives in a port town and watches the tall ships and tries to convince himself he wants to live a safe and familiar life on shore. But in the last song he knows "that I have great departures inside of me." In the morning I arrive home, having circumnavigated the planet. But that arrival is a departure from this life, this ship, this journey. And Elizabeth and I have more great departures in the very near future. That, I suppose is how adventures start, with great departures.

What goes home with me?

For today and tomorrow the literal question is, what goes home with me? Those things which have given great pleasure to my daily life will likely go to Courtney, my French press and thermos and aromatherapy spray. The time for final sorting is here on the material plane. I have five large boxes packed and ready to go, a big duffel bag, a suitcase, and a backpack. And I have already sent off three boxes of teaching materials. That's a lot of stuff. Surprisingly, I don't have the sense that I really shopped too much, as I thought I might. And I don't have more than the US Customs limit either. Perhaps I will sing a different tune when I see the shipping tab!

What else, though? What else will I take home from going around the world? A sense of the aloneness, the essential 'I-ness' of life, the way birth and death are "I" events, at least from the self perspective. Because going around the world in a ship is hard to articulate, much less to 'get' as a listener. Yet I question this interpretation even as I write it, because we are not born alone but born to a minimum of a mother and a world. And so, though I am enculturated to think of indescribable experience as belonging in a lonely way to me, it is actually all held together by the communal nature of reality, the web of existing in relationships. And that is probably what I will take home, an enriched self who, to the extent that she gives it away, will share the enrichment in rather subtle ways.

A not so subtle reality for me is that I have done something I really wanted to do in life; I have taken time from what I must do in order to do something I want to do. And I feel very energized by that....

"If the world is to be healed by human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear. People who can open to the web of life that called us into being, and who can rest in the vitality of that larger body." (Joanna Macy)

After Costa Rica

When we headed south along the western coast of Costa Rica, I headed homeward in my psyche. I got up Monday morning to write business letters, to complete my faculty evaluation of the journey, to write to my tax attorney. You get the gist here, all business of the homeward bound type.

There are wonderful people on this ship, but I don't know who will come forward with me into life and who will be a good memory and who will fade from memory. And this is not just about whom I would choose as companions; it's about where they live and what they do for a living and the kinds of things that decide whether our paths will cross again.

I heard yesterday of a young couple who went to the jeweler to have their wedding rings made and asked for a wave-pattern. The jeweler, not surprisingly, thought it an odd choice for a wedding ring and inquired as to its significance. Yes, you guessed it; they met on Semester at Sea. Among the students are some of the most privileged, self-assured, and over-confident of their value young people I have ever met. But I have also had the most beautiful, adventurous, caring, energetic and creative students, and their light is so full of light that it is hard to see anything else when you share space with them. And maybe that says something about being a human life, that the potential for light is much more important than highly rewarded mediocrity.

I have not had in my many years of teaching the sense of really turning over the world to a new generation as I have on this voyage. Maybe it is that I am older now, maybe it is that they are different from 'us,' my generation. (This experience gives me an understanding that the generation up from me sees mine as different, too.) Many of these students have been extremely well cared for, probably unlike any other generation before them, and it shows, though they are not at all aware of it. And this probably sets them up for some rough and tumble loss of innocence experiences. But I like these young people, and I might even trust them with the world if I had a choice!

The Mother Ship

This is something I share with every person on this ship, but not with any of you who have not been here: what it is like to come home to the MV Explorer after being out as a stranger in a strange land. The ship is home; it is a thing that is like a person in its familiarity, its safety, its containment. You arrive tired and dirty, having been on hyper-alert as to your safety, and hyperactive in the mental effort it takes to figure everything out for the first time, and tired from carrying all your stuff while walking from place to place. And you see this blue and white ship, with its familiar seven decks (plus one added this voyage!), its sea of faces around you, its sea of oceans beneath you, its familiar rocking, its nooks and crannies; your heart jumps as you yearn for its comforts.

In three more days, we won't see this ship anymore, and we will lose a mother, odd though that may sound. And, in three days, we won't see each other anymore, the 1000 people who have been our town, our church, our wellness program, our social club, and our penance for the last four months. In three days, we will all return to an overwhelming amount of consumer and personal choices, and we will be strangers to it. In three days, we lose this pace, where you sometimes have to sit and stare at oceans and skies because you are mesmerized, and we go back to that pace where you don't even know there are oceans and skies.

In three more days, I begin to realize, we face a long psychological exercise in integrating within ourselves life experiences that don't mix, something like the proverbial oil and water, I imagine. But I really can't imagine, I can only plan to face it when it happens.

Icons for the journey

As I pack up my cabin, I see things anew: I had photos of Molly Brown and Elizabeth held by magnets to the cabin side of my bathroom door, where I can see them easily from my bed.
And over these, a birthday card in the shape of a dragonfly, and opened to the inscription, sent to me by my sister Mary four years ago, three months before she died, inscribed this way, "Life is one long colorful trip! Love, Mary."

Then I have done well to treat it as such these past four months! I do really believe Mary would cheer for me; and I hope she really does. As for Molly, we are inextricably together. As for Elizabeth, I will see her in a few days!

P.S. As for my Parrot, who has yet to tell me her name, I have some photos of her which will soon be posted to the blog.

My Magic Moments

I had a lovely day in Costa Rica, where the people are sweet, the scenery is beautiful, the fruits and flowers and coffee fill your nostrils with happiness, and the pleasure of Pura Vida rides on the breeze... and I got to practice my Spanish, something the warm Ticos are happy to indulge.

But my favorite moment was when I walked into the backyard behind a souvenir shop and found a large black toucan with a yellow beak and lime green eyes, and two green parrots in large bare cages. The parrots especially were depressed, but I know that they like singing, and I simply long to evoke their liveliness, their interest, their parroty joie de vivre... so, first I said "hi" with a parrot accent. Ooops. I tried again, "hola." Nada. Then I sang "Some enchanted evening" from South Pacific. I squeaked along very badly, but parrots seem to like that song, and after a couple of verses the smaller parrot stretched her neck and squeaked back. Then I tried humming the Ode to Joy theme from Beethoven's 9th. She liked that one; she sang along towards the end of the second round, coming in right on the note, as if to show me she knew the tune, and she did!

At that point the toucan who had begun his rather high and harsh barking in a descending cadence also began to dance; clearly, he wanted some attention, so I did my best to mimic his utterance and we played together for a moment -- oh, those lime green eyes, what a charmer! And now my parrot was a bit jealous -- ah, relationship complexities. Back to the parrot and desperately searching for parroty tunes. She liked the Welsh hymn, Let All Things Now Living, well enough. Then I remembered -- thank you, Barbara Castillo! -- that I know a song in Spanish, and, with great delight, sang "Despierta, mi bien, despierta. Mira, que amanecio...." She got quite excited and engaged me in a duet for a couple of rounds of the whole song. I told her in Spanish that she was the bird of my heart and said good-bye. It was hard for me to wake up her liveliness and engage her heart, just to leave. But this is what I know, that a real moment of love understood between two beings can warm a very cold and dark night of body, soul, or both. I know that I left a spark of my love with her; the other parrot never received it, but watched the two of us fairly impassively. This communion across species is a joy of joys for me; that green parrot who found the heart to be roused left a spark of her love, too, and I shall be warmed. I shall be warmed.

Sea Life

It was immediately apparent that I had somewhere back in history, recorded no doubt in my genes, put a skin bag around a personal portion of salt water and went off to make a more private kind of life on land. That’s how my first days at sea were, such heightened awareness of the sea within, while in a not-at-all new relationship to the big sea out there. Here inside this body the fluids slosh with the tides, and it is only this fragile freckled membrane that prevents a total reunion.

I have been surprised by the big empty, the lack of life out in the big ocean, but I learned today that it is the equivalent of a desert out there; perhaps we should have seen some whales, but they would have been only passing through the great waters on their way to something else. Yesterday and today we are sailing through the something else, coastal waters, where life should be abundant.

Yesterday I saw four juvenile sea turtles, green turtles, but no adults, and today I saw a larger juvenile with a great scar on his head. The adults, I am told, are virtually gone and it takes a long time for them to mature, so there is a vastly diminished pool of breeding turtles. This brings to mind a cultural theater event I saw in Guilin, which took as its theme the mating and marrying rituals of the ethnic minorities in the ‘autonomous region,’ (not a formal Chinese province, as a nod of respect towards these non-Chinese peoples). There were gorgeous traditional dances and costumes, and one very elaborate community dance that is begun when someone shouts, “Hooray, these two are getting married, human life will go on for another generation, hooray!” I was so struck by the possibility that people would even consider it might be otherwise, but, when I consider it from the point of view of others, like sea turtles and tunas, who take a long time to grow up, well…I would love to hear them shout ‘hooray, these two are mating, and our life will be carried on!” And today, Sidsel and I pondered the recent findings that, at one point -- about 70 thousand years ago -- the human population was down to about two thousand individuals. Most people don’t know how close we came to never speaking -- much less writing, or making music, or herding, or farming, all things that happened well after that moment of coming so close to no ‘hooray!’

Today I saw a huge pod of spinner dolphins, having first noticed a sudden general commotion above the water, brown boobies and yellow-billed boobies flying in excited circles, and flying fish skimming low across the water. I noticed when a happy booby intercepted a shimmering fish-flight. Then I saw the dolphins as the ship plowed straight towards them and they peeled off, port and starboard, cavorting in the ship’s wake, jumping and spinning, at least a hundred spinner dolphins, and I watched for about five minutes as we passed each other. I was so happy to see even an island of abundant life.

The waters are thin on fish, and it is not just a romantic notion, they are fished out. You can see these clumps of murky wash just below the surface of the ocean, kind of floating islands that are made of shore trash that is submerged. I asked one of our biologists what the turtles eat. “Jellyfish.” And I had been seeing jellyfish. “Oh good!” I said. “Not so good,” replied Tatjana “because they think all the plastic bags are jellyfish….”

Evelyn is writing a very funny blog about what you learn about people when they are grouped together, eating Chinese food from a lazy Susan table. I was at table with her and I am one of the people, and it is funny as hell. Why don’t I write about that?

Well, hear this: the news about Canada Geese, gotten in conversation with our other biologist, Vic, is good. Canada Geese are fine, their population is hardy, if substantially rerouted in annual migration. I recently wrote a poem about the diminished number of them flying over southern California in the fall, ending with a rhetorical reflection that they may have found a new south, or a new way south. In fact, they have found both. How is that for good news? And I am so glad that I anticipated the possibility so I don’t have to trash the poem!

Around the World in 108 Days

Inexplicably, going around the world was something I wanted to do; it meant something to me.

What?

I just looked at the huge map of our journey that is out in our central meeting location, and I see that what took about 90 days on the other side of the planet is taking 20 something on this, the Pacific side.

Swooooosh and we are almost home… Costa Rica this weekend, then the Panama Canal crossing, then Miami and Elizabeth.

“Turn around and you’re two, turn around and you’re four, turn around and you’re a young man going out of the door.” (If you are female, you are used to using some imagination to see how the lyrics apply to you.)

I graded my last set of final papers today. I have never given so many A’s in my life. I suppose it helps to be in a closed environment, so very close to our various duties. I have not been late or absent once myself!

Neither have I begun to digest or even report the highlights of my journey…

How Lyn, one of the ‘lifelong learners,’ and I ended up sharing a lift up the mountainside in Guilin, China, how we tacitly agreed to share the silence as we glided through scented blossoming trees and pine tress, and the songs of birds, and dartings of butterflies. Half an hour up in glorious silence with a space for the birds in our ears, and a space for the pine in our nostrils, and half an hour down with a space for the distant mountains and clouds in our eyes. How we have carried away this connectedness for having shut up together!

How I tried to bargain for two silver-framed agate bowls, and the man who sold them, how he trapped me physically, and then, oh she wasn’t a man and she was holding on to me physically such that I suddenly realized I would need either rescue or strategy or both. I began to sing and then to dance with her, twirling around and turning myself out of the embrace, calling for Evelyn to come rescue me from down the street where she had gotten to. And she did come laughing hard and taking photos… yes, eventually I shall post one. How the young Chinese consumers were amused (or appalled) to see an older generation American dancing to rock music in the promenade in front of the young fashion store, out of which boomed some techno-dance sounds, familiar from my own youth.

How the professors at the art University appreciated my brush technique for bamboo—yes, they really did! And then how disappointed they were that it did not translate to clouds and how they had to re-evaluate me from having been almost amongst their ranks to being a student with promise. It was good enough praise to cause me to buy a set of brushes. Yes, indeed, got potential to realize in some lifetime…

How, as we departed the hotel in Guilin that last morning, I heard people saying my name and room number, “Anne, 525… Anne…Where is Anne?” And I sat on the bus contentedly knowing I had checked out early and paid for everything. And now they are at the bus saying, “but she left something in the room.” It was my stuffed piggy, Bethan, delivered to me on the bus for all to see. So I was outed as having brought a stuffed toy, not only on the ship, but on my field explorations. I explained that she served as a spare pillow; the explanation made it worse.

I have not even mentioned how I loved Mt. Koya-san and the mad monk, Kurt, who sent me off from the monastery with incense and sake, after a couple of long and lovely conversations over my two days there. How the elaborate tantric service in the dark temple filled my senses, leaping flames, singing gongs and cymbals and bells and voices, smell and sting of incense, taste of fruit, movement of muscle; and repose….

How it was to walk for hour after hour through the twelve hundred year old cemetery in a forest, miles long with two thousand stone monuments glowing in the forest as clouds gathered and parted overhead; and then to dash through the breaking storm for a late lunch of quiche and curry, cake and coffee. Yes, I did have my umbrella and when I arrived at the monastery gate in the cold and wet afternoon, I was grateful to be home and soon even more grateful when a young monk brought hot sake to my room!

I had prepared myself for rigors, told myself the monastery would likely have no heat….

The next morning this same young monk offered me a lift to the tram station for my ride down the mountain to the rail station. I sat in the back seat telling him that I had a contemplative heart but a busy life. “Me too,” he said. And he told me how he had been at the monastery for one month of a year’s training assignment, how hard he worked, how tired he was, how he wanted the hell out of there. And I remembered my own almost-convent youth, how postulancy was so much about scrubbing and novitiate about deprivation. I felt such tenderness for him; now and then he comes to mind and I mark the time with him as he counts down the days till next March when he will return home to Hiroshima.

Suddenly, I have been around the world… and shopped… and now must face packing and shipping… and conscience. I have been around the world. I often fall asleep with the predictable lyrics from that old Heart song, “Mamma ocean, hold me to you,” as she lifts me up and drops me down in the cadence of her great walking across the planet.

She has carried me to Brazil, and to Africa, and to India, and to Vietnam and Cambodia, to China and to Japan, to Honolulu, and now to Costa Rica. I have been around the world, all in one go… as I dreamed in my childhood that I would do… and it is a dream of water and air and apparitions, like a magic show, or a dream of a magic show…

I begin to wonder, how do you follow that? What do you do after you have gone around the world? Perhaps commercial space flight has some value, after all!

Aloha

I had one day on Oahu, one day. And, when I stopped to count, I realized I'd been there for 10 days a couple of years ago, and, before that, to celebrate my PhD in 1992. How very long ago that is, and even longer ago 1978, when Barbara and I lived in Wahiawa with Sue and then in Waimalu, over the grocery store.

Courtney and I rented a car and drove to the north shore for coffee in Haleiwah, and we waded in the water at the beach park, which is kind of spruced up with a stone wall and parking spaces, but the old bridge is still there with its beautiful concrete arches. Then on to Waiamea Bay for a swim in the most perfect swimming waters in the world. The currents were strong but the water and weather were perfect and I had the most satisfying fifteen minutes of swimming I have had since I left there in 1992. Courtney was on a mission to have a burrito for lunch. I did not think her chances were good on the North Shore, but there are now three Mexican restaurants in Haleiwah, so we had burritos and Negra Modelo beer. Then we went off to find Waimalu shopping center and Baldwin's Sweet Shop, which is right next door to its old location, bigger, cleaner, better organized but still ragged around the edges and truly local with a huge shave-ice menu. Yah, I get one passion fruit wid everyting, asuki bean and ice cream. Ono!

The Pricey Sweetness of Japan

I was simply taken aback by the deep sweetness of the Japanese people, and I find it hard to describe, except to say that they are so deeply wed to beautiful forms and to pro-social self-discipline that kindness and beauty are everywhere. And, of course, people pay a very big price for this... Let me describe the memory that most conveys this...

Japanese people fall asleep on the trains almost as a matter of course; they are, like Americans, very tired people, but for different reasons. They sit carefully in a spot, never taking more space than the most compact version of their bodies requires. So they sit with their shopping bags and/or briefcase on their laps, and with their elbows bent at their sides, palms open and upwards on top of their burdens, and then they fall forward bent in the back only. And so they sleep, not taking a quarter inch more than absolutely necessary.

I saw a woman in a remote rural train station take items out of a grocery bag in which something had broken and spilled. She took a wash rag from her purse and proceeded to clean each item and then to throw the broken and offending package away, returning to carefully wipe off the seat of the station bench.

Everywhere you look in Japan there is beauty, beautiful gardens, beautiful architecture, beautiful food, beautiful clothes, beautiful boxes for the beautiful food, beautiful bags for trivial purchases. And no effort is spared in manners or generosity.

They are tired from the effort of it all and they cannot each always live up to the level of required performance. They have a high suicide rate, very high, as high as the level of expectation for beautiful and generous performance. Still, it is their sweetness and generosity that I carry away in my heart, very differently from any other place I visited. I am sad that Japan is so far away because I would love to be there often and long.

Shanghai-ed by Tea in China

I had one day in Shanghai, so I took a cab into the center of the city to begin my day at the Shanghai Museum. I went first to the tea room and had a pot of green tea while two gay Asian businessmen drank espresso at the table next to me. I looked at the bronze collection… hmm… it was a rainy day and I had not a lot of energy after my trip to the interior. In the museum shop I bought a brush on silk painting of a little monk playing a flute while riding on the back of a charging bull—a depiction of the spirit of Buddhism, if ever I saw one!

I left the museum with my bags in one hand and umbrella in the other. As I headed for the taxi stand in the rain, a young man offered his umbrella, and asked if I had enjoyed the museum... and so began the adventure of the day. Soon we were joined in conversation by a friend of his who came out of the museum, then another young woman joined us. I shared my plans for the day and took advice on how to change them to get the best of Shanghai. As I was about to set out as directed, they invited me to come with them to a “tea ritual.” Off I walked with these nice English-speaking Chinese college students, in search of the tea shop. Of course, I did have half a thought to pay attention to my surroundings. Of course I knew the name of the street that I was on and approximately where it was in relation to the museum, of course. And I knew that I was walking off in a city that was entirely unknown to me, and with three very nice strangers, and, of course… but they were so nice.

I trundled along, chatting happily as turned in to the Champ Elysee, walked into a mall, found the tea shop, where we were led to a back room for the tea-tasting. The room was small and dim with a beautiful table made from slabs of a tree. The hostess wore a beautiful red silk jacket and stood behind the table, while the four of us sat on stools in front of the table. I asked to see a price list… ah, 38 yuen. I could afford that, I thought, while red-jacket assured me that they gladly accepted credit cards. So, the ‘tea ritual’ began, and it lasted for almost three hours, a progression from tea to tea, with demonstrations of making each tea and instructions for drinking each tea, sweet fruit tea with rose petals, bitter tea whose first taste is sweet, but whose second taste chokes, tea that sprouts flowers when boiling water is poured over it, tea that is good for digestion, or for heart health, tea for gender enhancement—ah, jasmine tea should make me feel like woman. I complimented my young friends on their unusually large vocabularies in English—phenomenal—a word they all understood! Even the young woman demonstrating and explaining the teas, who did not speak English, laughed at my jokes before they were translated. I noticed, too, how I was complimented on looking young for my age, and how they said that fair people age so much better than darker people, a patently ridiculous notion that may be soothing for some older white people.

I offered to pick up the tab as our tasting session came near to closure. Of course I was given the opportunity to purchase some tea to take with me, in a free canister! And, of course, I offered to pick up the tab. We were all tea-sated and happy from hours of conversation. We all selected tea to take away with us. Oh. I had not made that offer. But I got the bill! I asked for a calculator to be sure of what I was computing. Yes, indeed, my tea party was going to cost 327 US dollars. Now the fact that I was in a back room with four strangers in a city I don’t know and without a cell phone was central in my thoughts. I said I would like to take a moment to think, while they acted embarrassed, offering to return their teas. I did think and then I said, “I would like to pay for this and then I would like to take a taxi back to the ship.” Very nice. And I allowed them to walk to the taxi with me and translate my map and instructions to the ship which I had written in Chinese on a scrap of paper. Of course, I felt foolish, of course, taken for a ride, but at least I was on my way to the ship in a government taxi, or so I hoped!

When I returned to the ship, I met other people who had spent very expensive afternoons in parallel tea rituals. It occurred to me that it was up to me to interpret my experience, to notice how I had moved between pleasure and pain in my risk-taking afternoon; and then I thought, “Why settle on one interpretation of such a multi-faceted event? Let it be in all its complexity.” I had a lovely time with the tea and with the people and I was deceived and ripped-off; okay, then. But I also was able to “get off the bus,” the tourism bus on which everything is canned and prepared, “Stop here for photo, five minutes, best view.”

It may not have been the best view, but it was real and interesting… oh, yes, and expensive.

Pop culture in China

Here are two Chinese pop culture phrases I thought you'd enjoy... First we have "ma-ma, hu-hu" which literally means "horse-horse, tiger-tiger" and means "so-so," as in "the lunch was ma-ma, hu-hu."

And, secondly, in China they use the phrase "the little bush" to refer to the President of the USA.

After Earth Day

Dear Blog-readers,

I have exciting stories from China, where I was virtually kidnapped by tea traders, and Japan where I stayed in a mountain-top Buddhist monastery... and many reflections on both countries... but I cannot take the time to write these until after EARTH DAY events. We will be in Hawaii for Earth Day but will not spend even one night there, and the day that we sail away, my students and I will be doing a Global Studies session for the whole ship. Preparing for this will keep me very busy for the next eight days!

Vietnam, The Victorious

I only saw Ho Chi Minh City from a bus, and Saigon up close, so all my impression of Vietnam is taken from this limited point of view. Having said that, these people are David to the world's Goliaths; at least, that is how they see it! They have whipped the French, Chinese, and Americans and established their socialist state with a thriving market economy. Go figure. If anything, they seem to be in a gleeful moment, though there are shadows of China maybe wanting their offshore oil, and inflation maybe hurting the Vietnamese people as much as foreign investment helps them. But it is all hustle and bustle, much elbowing and shouting, spiced by a little begging.

I was walking through Saigon after purchasing my Japan Rail pass (which can only be purchased outside of Japan because it is for tourists), and I saw the Paris Boulangerie; how could I resist? And then, looking at the menu, I had to wonder what a Hawaiian pizza made in Saigon might be, so I ordered one. It took forever to make, it contained pickles where you'd expect pineapple, and it was huge. I tried to get my server to bring half of it to a table of students from the ship, but she said her boss was watching and she could not. About this time two boys, apparently brothers, came by and asked if they might clean my shoes while I dined. I declined, but when it was time to get my bill, I asked the waiter if I could give my pizza to the boys. He said that it would be kind and called them over. They took it, wary of its weirdness, and sat down at the curb to explore it, finally folding it over into a proper sandwich and taking a bite. Yuk! Splth! He ditched it in the planter box. Later, when they asked again about cleaning my shoes, I consented.

As if this were not bad enough, I had ordered some tailor-made silk suits, and, when I had them in the bag, they were too heavy to carry all the way back to the bus stop. So, there I was, overweight blond American, pouring sweat in the humid heat, having shopped too much to carry herself and her goods, hiring a cyclo, a rickshaw bicycle propelled by a skinny Vietnamese man, through the hundreds of motor bikes and cars and buses of Saigon. I would not have missed that ride for anything, as it gave me my most 'authentic' moments in Vietnam. I got to the bus right as it was departing, all my stuff with me, feeling Vietnam victorious, and getting out of town just in time... so as not to feel it too much.

Crying

I am generally not very good at crying; and I am sure I’d have had fewer headaches if I were better at crying. But there are times for crying, as I am learning again on this journey…

When Elizabeth was here, on the day after India when the ship was in a state of stunned silence, a student of mine sat down to tell me about her experience of singing to autistic children in India, particularly singing a greeting song that incorporated the name of this utterly inaccessible child. My student, Chelsea, started to cry and she apologized. I told her that crying is the right response to some things and that there is no need to hide it or apologize for it. She went on to say that the child smiled upon hearing her name, then clapped and winked along with the song.

In my Women’s Studies class, we decided as a group that we would watch a very graphic film on the practice of FGM (female genital mutilation) in Africa, because it is too easy to avoid what it is by just saying the ‘FGM’ acronym. So, during the portrayal of ‘the procedure’ on a twelve year old girl, there was much gasping, tightening of legs, wincing, and I decided to cry because it is something to cry about, because when we let the feeling happen we want to respond, and wanting to respond is where our humanity lives.

And, yes, when I heard the landmine victims' orchestra playing their traditional music in the jungle heat under the great trees of their homeland, I cried there, too, for both the beauty and the horror of it.

A Long History of Impermanence: Cambodia

The temple ruins all around Angkor Wat were alive with ghosts of the past, the ancient past and the just-yesterday, playing in the dance of light and shadow on intricately carved and tree-root crumbled temple walls, and playing, too, on the bodies and faces of living people. There were orchestras of land mine victims making traditional Khmer music and selling CDs outside of every temple. Buying one of these was the only time I felt like a complete idiot for attempting to bargain, which is the norm and is expected. I listened to the music, bought my CD, turned away, and, as I turned, burst into tears, real tears with shaking shoulders. People jumped to make sure I was okay. “Yes,” I said, “I am fine, but I want to cry because it hurts and it is beautiful and it just wants my tears.” One of the men was playing a leaf in his lips and it was gorgeous, the vibration of man and leaf interacting! Not to mention blind man on xylophone, legless man on flute, maimed woman on strings, all making traditional Khmer music on grass mats under the giant trees and in the steaming heat. Later, we stopped at the landmine museum, but I did not go in.

Our tour guide, Bunrith, described himself as an orphan whose father was a soldier and whose brother died in ‘the war,’ and whose sister starved to death as a child. His mother died fairly recently of a relatively normal illness. Bunrith is a university graduate in business who also trained in tourism for a year after graduation. He is now 35 and married with four children; he is intentionally recreating a big family, and he is proud of his work in tourism. He works twelve to fourteen hour days, seven days a week during the high season, with some time off in the low season. He is very proud of his life, of his country, of his work, and of his Buddhist monk King. The country is The Kingdom of Cambodia; so says my passport, and so says Bunrith. In his story you can feel ‘the story,’ of haunted memories combined with bright hope that is everywhere. People work long hours of every day and school is either morning or afternoon (because the kids need to work, too) six days a week. Siem Reap (pronounced Sim-Rip) is full of huge hotels and buffet restaurants and is hungry for tourist money, and the child peddlers are everywhere, selling bracelets made of wooden beads, postcards, interpretive books, bags, woven scarves and woven fish.... “Madame! One dollah, tree for one dollah, you buy from me! Remember tis face, see? You buy from me, okay? when you get back, you buy from me… where you from? California, oh; Sacamento!” Yes, they know the capitals of all the countries and all the states and their English is very good, so much better than my Cambodian.

The Temples are a good draw for tourism. Often I experience my camera as something of an impediment, obscuring actual experience in the process of trying to record it. Not so in Cambodia! The light and story and characters, contemporary and ancient, were compelling -- such that my camera and experience and I were one, and I am happy with resultant photographs. The temple carvings are various permutations of Hindu and Buddhist, as one generation reforms the preceding one. One builds the Shiva Lingas (abstract geometric sculptures of male and female genitals mating, with the male Shiva Linga making the statement that the yoni simply receives and contains, ‘his’ is fairly representative, ‘hers’ is a square box); and the next generation knocks these out to replace them with Buddhas. Then the next wave comes and knocks out the Buddha, replacing him with a new Shiva Linga; the dualist and monist versions of reality competing, as everywhere they seem to do. In the walls of the temples are carved Buddhist depictions of the heaven and hell realms, and Hindu depictions of the Mahayana, gods and demons churning up the sea of milk, and then humans and animals fighting in bloody procession. All of these carvings (including one very vivid stegosaurus from the 10th century!) are in various states of intactness and decay. And, over all, a few serene Buddhas, themselves in various levels of cohesion, look upon all of it as so much coming and going, impermanence in procession before the witness of consciousness.

Monkey Mothers

In the same place where the monkey in this portrait (her blind eye is on your right) clawed my face, I saw a young mother monkey plucking in an agitated way at her infant’s umbilical cord. The infant had an abrasion on his forehead (perhaps from recent birth?) and was trying unsuccessfully to nurse. An older monkey mother with her own baby at nipple, lifted the young mother’s infant firmly away from her and cradled the infant along with her own, refusing to let the young mother have the baby back. Eventually, the baby was calm, the young mother was calm, and the older mother gave the baby back to the young mother. The baby cried at being returned to the deficient mother, but the older monkey stayed close by observing the interaction of young mother and infant. So much for ‘maternal instinct;’ this one, at least, had to learn how to mother, and she had someone to teach her.

Blog has a new look?

Yes, this blog is dressed up now, thanks to Elizabeth, who made it more appealing and easier to use by bringing consistent color and format to the kinds of links and by reducing the sheer volume of "bilious green" (the color of seasick people) and replacing it with more subtle color blocks!

A Poem

The Big Picture
By Anne Benvenuti
© March 2008



I see a flash of lightning in the night sky


I see a rainbow as light breaks through the clouds


I see a spark of fire in dry grass


I see a pebble in the farmer’s field


I see a paper boat on an ocean’s swell


I see a bird dive into the sinking sun

Photo time (4): India

The contrasts of India... the image of the woman sweeping the dock in Chennai in the polluted mid-morning air, the Taj Mahal, the ubiquitous monkey (one on every corner), new shoes for Anne, and the sadhu and his dog by the Ganges... five images of many from Anne's collection, again selected and uploaded by Elizabeth on her return home from India.

Photos © 2008 Anne Benvenuti

Photo time (3): Brazil

In this series, again selected by Elizabeth from Anne's photos... the village in Brazil where Isabel lives, the iconic Christ towering over Rio de Janeiro, the late afternoon light over Salvador, Bahia; and the legless beggar and his dog of whom Anne wrote in her post from Brazil....

Photos © 2008 Anne Benvenuti

Photo time (2): Baby animals

Baby animals... and a big animal (the elephant, that is!). Safari time with Jabulani... (this is the second in the series of pictures brought to you by Elizabeth).

Photos © 2008 Anne Benvenuti

Photo time (1): Life at sea

First series of photos, from the 800 or more pictures brought home by Elizabeth from Anne's camera! Here is the view from Anne's balcony, the approach to port (in this case, Salvador, Bahia, in northern Brazil), and the students watching landfall... oh yes, and the trustworthy ship, MV Explorer... pictures selected by Elizabeth, who takes responsibility for picking the ones she liked best!

Photos © 2008 Anne Benvenuti

Vietnam!

I spent a wonderful day in Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City, or HCMC on maps). What a vibrant place! Tomorrow I fly to Cambodia for three days and will return Sunday night. So the blog will be quiet for a few days.

Spiritual Sweets in India

Yes, I am still pondering India. And, more than that, I wrote somewhat critically relating some of the core concepts of Hinduism to India as a society, meaning to come back and address those ideas in a more complex way, and I have not done it, thus doing verbal injustice to India.

I felt a kind of spiritual sweetness, even in very troubled places, marked by humor and kindness especially. As there is seemingly always someone ready to assault, there is also someone ready to rescue, and there is a gentle humor and tolerance about the predicaments of human beings that seems foundational; it’s right under the hurry, agitation, and shouting, as though this tolerance for the foibles of humanity is what allows the world to continue functioning in India. This, too, might easily be related to that same basic Hinduism that tolerates intolerable suffering, the concept that we will each be liberated, given enough lifetimes and all the chances needed to burn up our karmic debts. So, while we live the drama, we also can see it from the perspective of great stretches of time, many, many lifetimes.

My first morning in Rishikesh I walked down steep cement steps to the Ganges River, the clean and beautiful Ganga, at dawn. There was only one other person there, a man dressed as a sadhu and bearing the marked forehead of a Sadhu. We passed in silence. I stepped into the river, brought hands full of water up and let them spill back, giving thanks for the spiritual wisdom and riches of India, and chanting the Gayatri mantra. I could hear chanting from the monasteries and temples and also from the cds in the marketplace. On my return up the steps, I greeted the Sadhu and we had a conversation in mixta, using words from different languages as best we could to convey our thoughts. He and his wife had moved to Rishikesh from Delhi five years before. She lived across the river, sleeping out under the stars at a women’s place, while he lived in the ashram a couple of kilometers up the hill. He was happy for the clean air and water and the search for holiness in place of his former rat-race; me, too. As we moved towards a natural pause—especially natural given the strain of trying to find words we both understood!—he reached into a pouch for some of the same ash that he wore on his forehead and offered me a blessing, which I gladly accepted. He said it was a prayer for prosperity in this life, and then gently suggested that a cup of tea would be a nice reciprocation. But I had come to the river with empty pockets that I dramatized for his benefit and suggested that ours would have to remain a purely spiritual relationship. He laughed with understanding and ease, called his puppy over for me to play with, and then let me take their photograph. The thing is… it would have been one more con and one more cup of tea from our respective positions if I had had money in my pocket, but it was a blessing that stayed with each of us, and perhaps the puppy, too, especially because there was no money in the mix. I love him truly in my memory, and the puppy on the pink ribbon leash, too.

Rishikesh is lined with market stalls, selling fabrics and religious artifacts for the most part, and the hawking, while constant, is of a gentle quality. I walked into a jewelry shop and perused earrings unmolested before hearing a man’s voice say from a back room, “If you would like help, I am here, just let me know.” It was so refreshing to be allowed to browse entirely unmolested. I saw a silver spider with movable legs that I liked; it reminded me of the native American symbolism of the spider as creator of the world, weaver of realities. When the man from the back emerged in response to my question about the spider, he said that he would like to give me a gift and offered me a small smooth stone, which I accepted; I believed that it was not a ploy but sincerely offered.

He told me that the spider represents the consciousness out of which we spin our stories and into which we digest them, maker and destroyer of universes. As we conversed, I could see the genuine calm and deep clarity of his eyes. I trusted him and so relaxed into a memorable conversation of such simple and direct mutual pleasure. In some way we recognized one another—even articulating it at the same instant--and I was aware of the fact that the truth of which we spoke is the very same truth which I was so recently seeing as causal of undue suffering in the human lives of Indian people. We talked for a while about the way that the spirit is awake and aware and the secret of living is to stay close enough to it to remain in the happiness of the eternal present, even while participating in the ‘story’ of our lives with all its dimensions of pleasure and pain. His name is Punit, and it is a name that comes with me halfway around the world, wrapped with a smooth stone and a silver spider in a red silk bag.

So I made two spiritual friendships in India, both with men of Rishikesh, and these treasures I carry away with me in that timeless place to which India always refers. India, place of paradox, gems amidst the rubble.

Humor in India

Here is a joke shared with us by our Agra driver, Keshin:

Three businessmen were on an airplane flying over the ocean, an American, a Japanese, and an Indian. The American pulled out his money clip, and tossed a thousand dollar bill out the window; it was nothing (except of course a challenge!). The Japanese businessman responded swiftly. He said, "In Japan we understand that money is not everything; we appreciate quality engineering, innovative technology, and good aesthetic style and we know that we can always find even more of these qualities in our productions." So, he took off his watch and threw it out the window, sitting back with a faint smile and a fully satisfied air. The Indian understood the challenge. He was thinking furiously while the ostentatious show was acted out, "What do we do in India, like no one else does?" Hmm, he thought of beautiful silk clothing, but... ah, all of Asia does that. He thought of abundant gold jewelry and large sparkling gem stones, but the whole hip-hop industry does that. He thought of Bollywood, but... well, it rhymes with Hollywood... Ah! Finally he had it: What Indians make like nowhere else is people! So he tossed the American and Japanese businessmen out the window...

As for me, I took my one hour of Bollywood dancing lesson, and I really enjoyed it, full of that pulsating rhythm and much graceful hand gesture, used coyly to suggest that it's all feminine and ripe in here beneath the colorful silk wrap. So, we were in a family-owned jewelry store in Agra and the family was playing a Hindi-pulsating tune while we enjoyed a relaxed conversation. It was my moment. I crouched down, turning my face away, then raised up with my hands turning over head, then turned in a circle clicking my wrists together, hands undulating, foot stepping in a circle, and coyly pulled my two hands across my face, fingers spreading to reveal my way-too-tempting self. Yes, the family had a very good laugh, and so did I... I will gladly give lessons on my return!

The Grand Buffet

Imagine going around the world in four months! It is like being at a truly gourmet buffet for five hours--everything is beautiful, delectable, and delicious. You feel obligated to eat it all in five hours, and, even if you try hard, you cannot...

So I left Malaysia this morning, surprisingly comforted by the rumbling of the ship's engines and the roll of the sea. The pre-dawn featured an almost full waning moon and mountains lit up by a lively lightning storm. I was aware of leaving Malaysia without having visited one of the best elephant sanctuaries in the world, without having seen the fireflies (you can go on a firefly safari here), without having snorkeled, much less got my diving certificate, in some of the best waters in the world, without a beautiful batik sarong, without the men's sarong I wanted to buy for Jeff. Not only that, I awakened feeling unwell, no doubt the ongoing infection in my jaw, compounded by the duration of it and several days of antibiotics.... Heck of a way to spend one's Birthday; I am 20,000 days old today! This was the news of my morning email from Elizabeth, whose father has created a program to calculate such things. As for Malaysia, I plan to return with my sister, Corinne, who needs to see the fireflies and I think I need to see them, too.

The sunrise was glorious, great cumulus clouds, lit up golden pink and orange; an auspicious sailing into the Strait of Malacoa. We will stop at Singapore tonight for provisions, but without the opportunity to go ashore. On now to Vietnam, Thich Nhat Hanh's (from whom I received my Buddhist precepts in 1993) home, and I think of him and feel my love and appreciation for him as I turn towards his home.

Malaysian reprieve

Of course, I have more to say about India. On the last day in India, someone said, "I will still be thinking about this India experience in Malaysia," and I thought, "I will still be thinking about this India experience when I am old." It is (I am sure) partly the contrast between the two places... but Malaysia is so relatively easy a place to be, relatively effortless and pleasant, but not as bland as that comparison makes it sound!

It is a Muslim country, in a refreshingly non-hostile and sweet style, and there are Buddhists and Hindus in large numbers; also a Christian minority. The ethnic groups are Malay, Chinese, Indian, and European. They seem to get along well enough; there is not the sense of hostility amongst groups that I have experienced in many other places. The PM recently restructured his cabinet to include those who have opposed him, a wise move given his recent loss of popular support, with protest centered in Penang, where we are. The protest has to do with the legally sanctioned preference given to Malay Muslims over other groups, and formal change in this policy seems to be around the corner.

But my delights have been the food and the artistic design sensibility! The 'hawker food' experience involves going into a large pavilion around the sides of which are various food vendor carts, then having a walk around to see what you like before sitting down to order. In KL I had Malaysian fried noodles with green onion, mushroom, and chopped fried chicken, and a limeade for about 2 dollars. Today in Penang I had Thai rice with chicken, onion, peppers, pineapple, and golden raisins--served on a banana leaf--a limeade, and a lychee honey date drink for dessert, again for 2 dollars. The food is famously delicious and eaten with the right hand.

The design sensibility is one I like very much, lots of vine and leaf motif, with bright colors and bold abstractions. I bought a contemporary pottery tea service in abstract vine and leaf and sea motif. I watched a cobbler custom make shoes from wood and leather, the odd bit of plastic, or bead, individually painting various motifs on each pair. Like much of the developing world, Malaysia has both glamour and grunge, but with a sweetness and tropicality that somehow emerge from these various traditions meeting up with each other on this jungle peninsula... You get the feeling that it could have been otherwise, but that these people have found their magic, and that they want to keep making it.

Sparkling gems of India

In an email this morning, mom asked me if the Taj was gorgeous. The answer is YES! When I had made my way through a 2k walk dense with beggars and hawkers, including some of the most severely maimed humans I have ever seen, and gotten through the ticket office and locker room, where I was required to store my jelly beans and mini-flash light, but not my humongous camera… and after I had figured out how to find and use the one public toilet in the huge compound… bring paper, don’t let yourself be urgent because it takes time to negotiate the infamous squat fixture, bring rupees to pay attendant for yellow paper napkin, whether or not you will use it....

Finally, I stood on the steps before the reflecting pool, looked at the glowing Taj and said to the eight year old inside, the one who used to gaze at photos of the beautiful Taj and be filled with simultaneous longing and delight; to her I said quietly, “I got you here.”

The colorful garb of Indian pilgrims and tourists makes of the grand scene a setting for jewels, sparkling jewels. Women from all the regions wear the saris of their regions; Sikhs wear colorful turbans; sadhus wear orange and saffron. The Taj sparkles—and it does or does not do so roughly in keeping with the digital read-out of information on pollution index. Yes, the Taj Mahal is dimmed by toxic waste, but not extinguished. But the surprising pleasure for me in the Taj was the way that sound reverberates, more than an echo, something like I imagine a super-conductor might produce if audible. The sound rings round and around in a haunting beauty. The male tour guides would occasionally create a sound to demonstrate this, and, given the almost total absence of the feminine in public places, I made a high note to give to this woman’s burial place—the sound was surprising in the air, and made beautiful by its context. Some loved it, and I am sure some hated it.

So, representative of India on a grand scale, the jewel of the Taj Mahal sits in the cesspool of the city of Agra, where industry has been prohibited, worsening the poverty and lessening the pollution, where cars with exhaust cannot come within a specified distance of the Taj and beggars line the walkway from the car drop-off, where thieves and hawkers and horns assault. No doubt, my perceptions of Agra were colored by the experience of an abscessed tooth and my sensitive temperament, but Agra is Agra, and only the Taj would get me there!

On the walk away from the Taj, a boy of about ten pestered and pestered me, stepping front of me so that I would have to trip over him, while I resolutely ignored him. Finally, I looked down at him, dogging my left side and said, "Do you know the expression 'wasting your time?'"
He smiled ruefully and went off to try someone else. A bit later he was back at my right side, and I said, "A good businessman does not waste his energy." He did not try again. (Yes, of course, it is hard to ignore hungry children and maimed adults, but, if you do not, you have an unmanageable horde upon you in a blink.)

Just outside the city of Agra is Akbar’s Mausoleum, a beautiful red sandstone building, with an enclosed deer park, and a large troupe of monkeys. Sitting on a bench just inside the walls, I was defaced by a very large monkey. By this I mean that she sat looking at me, hand out, as I sat looking at a baby behind me. Then, very suddenly she reached out and clawed the very center of my face, making a nice gash from the inside corner of my right eye, down through my lower lip. Of course, it bled profusely, and this, no doubt, sealed my impressions of Agra, in spite of tender nursing from Bethan and protective hovering from Bel!

As anyone likely to read this knows, I typically fare well with animals and have even fancied myself a kind of human ambassador to the animal worlds; imagine my dismay then at this wild misunderstanding! I came back later after the bleeding had stopped to look at the monkey who slapped me. She was unhappy, frowning permanently, and I thought she might be in pain. I took her portrait. Later, when I looked at it in non-glare light, I could see clearly that she was blind in one eye and I understood that I had probably moved into a space of non-vision and gotten smacked in a frightened hurry. And such is life; why should she have risked me, hurt already as she was? Dorothy Benvenuti, you are not in Kansas anymore!

Never travel to India for the First Time!

“Never travel to India for the first time,” is a saying that Sidsel Millerstrom, anthropologist on board, shared around before we arrived in India. She doesn't remember where she got it, but does remember the resonance. First, I will tell the overpowering to the senses and emotions bad news. There will be good news and I will again save most of it for dessert.

India is full of edgy energy and stark contrasts, reminding me in these respects of home in the USA, except that the extremes are so much more so. (I notice that I want to end each sentence about India with !!!) In the cities, there is a quality of awakening into ever greater possibilities of materialistic decadence that reminds me very much of California in the 1980's, including the use of every possible space for advertising. This, I am told, is one of the effects of globalization, the transnational glories of unrestricted 'market driven' economies and Western consumption styles and habits. It has interesting repercussions here in India: for example, the 15-fold increase in dowry murders between the 1980's and now. Since wealth is gendered by way of marriage, the bride who cannot provide must die, and often horribly. This is not a problem for the Brahmins, of course, as they (men and women) have what they need and the power to do what they want to do without marrying up. And the Dalits live hopeless lives, rich only in every kind of abuse. It is the majority of people who are not at the extremes of society who are most affected by the intersections of globalization and traditional social structures, and especially those on the poor but able-to-aspire end. There is nothing that can't be bought in India, except, I suppose the quality of consciousness that allows one to live surrounded by largely unquestioned and unchallenged large-scale distress of every kind.

(Caste has been outlawed, and so has dowry for that matter--and, when a wife of seven years or less dies, the husband is automatically legally suspect, but rarely prosecuted for one of the ghastly 'accidents.' Yet these customs live on and even grow in the light of “return to our own culture and traditions,” a theme that is being exploited globally in order to keep the powerful powerful and to make of the meek easy-pickings. Interestingly, it works by way of liberal post-colonial guilt--it is not our place to interfere; and those who want to exploit are quick to remind us to mind our own business. But the poor and powerless need assistance and advocacy as ever they have, so we have to find new and more respectful ways to care and to interfere with wrong-doing.)

The general level of pollution in India is stunning. I recall walking home from school in the 70's in Los Angeles with yellow-gray skies, burning lungs, watering eyes. Then we passed the Clean Air Act. India has no such thing and it gave me a sense of where LA might have gone; people cough constantly, the Taj Mahal from a short distance away is a hazy apparition in the murky sky, yellow gray air is the norm. There is no drinkable water for those who cannot afford to buy it; those who can afford to buy water on the streets must be careful that it is clean water they are buying and not bottled waste that has had a cap glued back onto it. The population density is amazing--one billion people in a place that is largely without infrastructure--so that the filth density mirrors the population density. There are no sewage systems in many, many places (yes, people just squat at the roadside or in the field, or in the alley). The air is dirty, the water is dirty, the majority of the people are dirty--clothes I bought in middle class stores had to be laundered intensely to get the smell of soot out of them--and with all the dirt comes illness.

The sheer number of hungry, maimed, infected, angry, and hopeless people is stunning. Add to this that staring is the norm; you are stared at and sized up from any number of angles constantly; the assault of people trying to sell, beg, grope, or steal is non-stop (picture hands reaching for breasts while riding in a taxi with the window down in a sweltering street, crowded with cows, sari-clad women in brilliantly colored silk carrying burdens on their heads, donkey-drawn carts piled with rolled carpets, cars and scooters with blaring horns (and bearing signs that say “please use horn”), barefoot children darting in and out. Beauty is always there, like so many jewels sparkling in a garbage dump, in the artistry and design of fabrics, in jewelry, in religious monuments, in human faces, and gestures, and humor. And danger is always there, not only the small danger of theft, but the pulse of rage that wants blood and sparks into flame every day.

The India Times carried a story about University of Delhi students on a public train who resisted 'eve-teasing,' blatant and public verbal and physical sexual harassment of a woman or women by groups of men, a common occurrence accepted in the mode of 'boys will be boys,' with an added flavor of punishment for women who are out and about. When the students and professors resisted, the locals stopped the train, decoupled the car, beat the students, pummeled the car with stones and bricks and set it on fire to force the students out into their midst. There were many stories more violent and gory every day, with a special fascination for fire. Rescue by helpful strangers is frequent and necessary.

I began to see the deep relationship of the core concepts of Hinduism (an emphasis on spiritual liberation through consciousness and identifying with consciousness while disavowing the physical body) and the physical horrors on every street corner. On the more understandable side, it creates a vicious cycle of suffering and the need to transcend suffering and the worsening of suffering by way of inattention to it. On the abhorrent side, it justifies any kind of physical condition or behavior on the basis of its karmic justification (not all that different, by the way, from the puritans of South Africa who preached that the saved elect were white Europeans and the damned were black Africans). I began to feel almost hatred for this disavowal of the body in the name of the spirit, seeing clearly the way that the spirits and consciousness of the poor and suffering are crushed by the lack of care for their bodies.

Tomorrow's theme, though, is that anything you can say about India is true--and so is its opposite...

Just the facts from India to date!

This is the evening of March 20, Maundy Thursday, the first day of spring up there in the northern hemisphere, fall down here, and my second day in Malaysia....

I left the blogosphere on March 11, when we pulled into the unspeakably polluted port of Chennai (formerly Madras). And, though I just called it unspeakable, I have a photo of a dalit (untouchable) woman in red clothes sweeping the port tarmac with a hand-held bundle of rush; she appears as a reddish glow on a dark gray background. It was mid-morning when I took the photo. The same afternoon Courtney and I flew up to Delhi, where Elizabeth met us at the airport. The next morning, Bel (from Brazil), Elizabeth and Courtney and I set out for Agra, for what turned out to be a seventeen hour day, culminating with five after-dark hours at the filthy and dangerous Agra train station. Agra makes Chennai look tidy and sweet, but more about that later. We returned to Delhi at 3:30 am instead of 10 pm, and James was kind enough to come out in the middle of his sleep to fetch us for our two hour turn-around before catching the early morning train to Haridwar. The train to Haridwar and the taxi to Rishikesh were lovely. Rishikesh was as heavenly as Agra was hellish. After a day and a half we returned to Delhi for a short night's sleep and flew back to Chennai the next day.

Elizabeth joined me on the Explorer for three days of sailing to Malaysia, so she got to experience normal life on the ship, to the extent that you can call the 24 hours of stunned silence after India "normal life on the ship." Everyone was shaken and exhausted, but we bounced back into the teaching/learning life for two days before arriving in Penang, Malaysia, a clean and safe, even kind, place. I cannot say that we pulled into port here because we have not and cannot--we are 'parked' out in the water and get carried over ("tendered" is the word; as contrasted, I wonder, with being thrown overboard and required to swim ashore?) to the dockside by boat, waiting about half an hour on a sweltering and pitching enclosed lifeboat for each disembarking and each returning to the ship.

Last night we took the sleeper train (Elizabeth loves the trains!) to Kuala Lumpur; it was actually much more civilized than the overnight train from London to Glasgow! We got Elizabeth to the airport express train and me to the monorail through the city so that she could fly to London and I could shop in the Central Market of Kuala Lumpur. I was still exhausted from India, so, while I enjoyed KL, I was minimally functional and got an early standby flight home to
Penang.

Now for some dinner and a shower and SLEEP!

Preview

I took a Bollywood dance class this evening; look out, here I come!

Passage to India

Tomorrow we port in Chennai (Madras), where Courtney and I will get to the airport to fly to New Delhi, where Elizabeth and our Brazilian friend, Isabel, will meet us. They have been staying with Henry (LA Times correspondent) and James. Once Courtney and I join up with them, our now crowd will move to a local B and B. We will all depart for a very long day-trip to Agra because I had a huge childhood crush on the Taj Mahal ("jewel of all palaces"). The next day we will go to Rishikesh in the north for an overnight and then back to New Delhi, and then back to Chennai. Elizabeth will sail with us to Malaysia and depart from there to visit her parents in London.

So, I won't be here for a week or so.

Shipboard Life; Up-side

Recall that someone makes my bed, does my laundry, prepares my meals? And, of course, I can't run any errands or do any yard work or clean the house or work on the perennial maintenance list. This means that the kind of time pressure and multi-tasking I am used to just doesn't happen. I have an 8 a.m. class every class day at sea (there are about five sea days throughout the voyage that are free days). I get up early enough to do my email and preparation before I lead a 7 am meditation session on the aft of the 4th deck, then have 'office hours' at breakfast in the 6th deck dining hall before class. We have a few exercise machines and very high demand for them, so we sign up the day before. I typically work-out mid-afternoon. At five pm most days I choose between a drumming group and going upstairs to the faculty lounge, front of the top deck with a view of where we are headed, for a glass of wine and conversation with colleagues. Then we wander off to dinner, or I skip dinner. There are lots of evening activities, many of which I would love to attend: lectures, coffee houses, poetry readings (one of our faculty is Gregory Orr, 28 books of poetry and lots of awards and a lovely man), demos, dance classes, yoga classes. Alas, I don't go to many of these because of my need for sleep and early rising.

Yesterday we had "Sea Olympics" (recall the silver sea of faculty), the kind of event from which I usually run and hide, with events like synchronized swimming, ping-pong, tug-rope, relay race, scrabble, scavenger hunt, and lip-sync as the finale. It is a real marketing event for the ship-shop (yes, we have a campus store on board), since the seas all have colors and the store caries SAS logo clothing in the full range of colors. The day was so much fun, especially the lip-sync, which the students did as full MTV productions, using parts of several songs to tell stories, fully choreographed and often with some projected graphics backdrop. There was lots of gender fun and high camp; there are 70% women and 30% men on the voyage so it makes for interesting social dynamics. I have at long last learned to appreciate hip-hop as tribalism (read: very communal), and I am much less worried about the way young people are immersed in eletronic life--they are in their bodies, too, in a way that my generation was not, and in a way that my parents generation was not.

I am much less busy than in my real life, and I could use the time to study and to write and to develop skills I've long wished I had--music, dance, language---but often I just sit and stare at the ocean, or feel the salt water inside me moving to the dance of the salt water outside. This is 'human being' Deb, one of our two psychologists reminds me. And so it is.

Fraud Happens...

Yesterday was banking business day for me (also the Sea Olympics on the Ship), so I sat down for a long and patient session of slow internet service. When I attempted to get my visa card statement, I got a message that I was locked out due to my number of failed attempts to log in. But I had not attempted to log in! So, I took my last Ship calling card and used it to call fraud protection. Indeed, there were multiple thousand dollar charges that the bank had not honored, and my account was closed. Since I traveled with only one credit card, I shall be without for the duration. Since this episode results in no loss to me, other than loss of potential to spend more than I actually have, I am not suffering even a little bit over it, though I do feel 'awakened.' In India I plan to travel with water, sani-wipes, and my begging bowl, all in Diane's backpack, which has already been on a safari.

Another relatively newer tactic in the world of traveler theft is to attach cameras or copying devices (which travelers often take to be security equipment!) to ATM machines, so that, after you leave with your 200, they leave with whatever is yet in the account.

I know I have some readers, other than Elizabeth (hi,mom!) and you all are invited to comment if you like.

Other People's Stories

The pleasure of other people’s stories is something I am learning in a whole new way. Here is one…

Sailing with us is Evelyn Hannon, a ‘life-long learner,’ as they are called on the ship. Evelyn is the founder of Journeywoman.com, a wonderful travel resource for women.

After her divorce in her early 40’s, she bought a backpack and took a trip to Europe for five weeks; it was a ‘do or die’ experience for her because she was afraid that she could not manage it. Needless to say, she managed, and then she wanted to help other women manage travel… Journeywoman took off, way off! It was not what Evelyn expected, that everyone would get interested in what she was doing as a smallish project. Time Magazine named her as one of the ‘innovative thinkers’ of the 20th century, and she told me this story about it….

Evelyn arrived home to a full answering machine one day, and in the process of dealing with her jammed message system, she figured out that she had been selected as one of Time’s innovative thinkers for the millennial issue. She had had a brief phone interview and knew that there was some interest in her project, but she did not know that she was a finalist, much less a selection. She went to the local market to buy a copy of the magazine, got in the checkout line, found her page. She was so excited and wanted to share, but she didn’t want to brag, so she said to the guy ahead of her in line, “Would you look at this! She looks just like me!” And the guy responded, “Wow, that’s evil! She does look just like you.”

Journeywoman.com. Check it out!

Energized!

What I have been trying to say in my last two posts is the way that this journey is not what I thought it would be; and, of course, that is how life is—not how we think it is going to be. I have emerged from that realization quite energized by the reality, though. I am learning to live in a closed community of 1,000 people; they are in my face and my reactions to them put me in my face, all of it calling for a level of tolerance, flexibility, coping, courage, acceptance and so on. There is nowhere else to go!

Just, let’s talk about food for a minute. That lovely dinner I had with Chef Jose in Mauritius? I ate at least five desserts because I could, and because they were beautiful and so tempting. Food on the ship is food; it is there to provide sustenance, and every day I experience it more this way. What a vivid illustration of the way in which desire is aroused and whetted for endless pursuit. How long has it been since food was simply food and not an event? Mind you, I look forward to food as an event, too, and especially as a social event with family and friends!

And the ocean, the ocean is a relationship that I had not anticipated. I thought I was going to go over the ocean to Brazil and Africa and India. I did not understand that the ocean was going to require much more energetic and deep engagement. I did not understand the deep trance that I still don’t know whether to attribute to the ocean herself or to the medicating patches. But the first day after we leave port, everyone sleeps for hours. Today I slept for four hours during the day, and I am ready to go to sleep for the night. By tomorrow I will start to have my sea legs and sea psyche and I will work out and so on…then the level of energy tends to build until we arrive at the next port. We have A days and B days when I teach different classes, and port days, and the rhythms of life relate to these, not to days, weeks, weekends, months.

And tomorrow I go, by invitation only, to the Captain’s Table for dinner. Everyone does this and I believe that I am in the final group, the rag-tags, as I like to imagine us. The next night I teach a community class on meditation basic skills, and since we are approaching India, I will throw in a Hindu chant or two. The next day is the Sea Olympics, with the whole ship divided up into Seas. The faculty and life-long learners are the Silver Sea (a short stop on the way to the Dead Sea!), and I am on the Tug-rope Team. I suggested events like recitation of ills and surgeries, name that medication, I remember the day, afternoon napping, sentimental song lyrics—things we might actually win—but it was too late; the events had been decided. No one was funny for the first several weeks and none of us noticed the absence of humor because we were intent on figuring out where we were and what was called for. Now some humor begins to emerge and it is especially pleasant after an absence!

I recall reading Thomas Merton describe life as the opening of a series of packages, that at first, we rip into the package, dying to know what it contains, then always experience a little disappointment because it does not contain the elixir of permanent bliss. Gradually, we learn to enjoy the package, understanding that all packages are empty boxes, but that the unwrapping is exquisite. And so my trip around the world is both more of the same and amazingly exquisite.

Oh-no, community!

What I am beginning to understand is that the bigger portion of this adventure is not the going around the world part, but the doing it with a thousand strangers who are necessarily going to figure out how to be a community. As you know, I have spent my life as far from the madding crowd as I could get; and now my recompense! Perhaps there are things we just need to learn in life, and so here I am in the crash course...

Spice Island

Our chef last night, Jose (Jo-sey) Sooprayen, was delightful, a long ago boy of Mauritius who used to cram his homework to completion so that he could go watch his mother cook. He then traveled the world: France, India, China, Italy, Greece, learning tricks of the trade and bringing them back to Mauritius, a place that is fusion and more fusion in its essence. One of his specialties is fried peeled bat, but he did not make that for us. I asked him about it because I kept picturing the little Kernville bat of my close encounter with batdom; but, he explained, these are large fruit bats made delicious by their diet. What Jose made for us was a fish with lots of mustard oil and seeds, and curry and garlic and chiles and new onions; it sounds impossible and tastes delicious. (Yes, I have the recipe and will make it for you next summer!) I bought the spices this morning, trying to shop for what I really wanted while freeing myself from constant arm twisting and a kind of walking behavior that is really and literally herding. Then I left my new spices and my reading glasses in the water taxi.... I asked Jose if his mother is proud of him, executive chef at Le Mauricia, a big resort, and he said she is very proud of him, and that she cooks for him when he goes home on days off.

True Confessions of a Strange Sort

How can you say to all the people at home, whose dream is like your own, to travel the world, to go around the world, to sail the seas and forget about time… how can you, without coming across as a total porker, tell people so like you in desire that there is a downside to the dream? (And, of course, one of the things I learn again is that there is always something to whine about, and something to rejoice in, and often real objections of the prophetic kind to be raised, not all of which can be raised effectively, and so the work of discernment is never done.)

Today we arrived in Mauritius and I have gladly stayed on ship. I slept in till 8, the time that my classes begin every day at sea, and an hour later than my 7 a.m. office time! I was still in my pajamas at 10:30... when I mended pants I’d ripped on a plane in South Africa, then put them on. I graded papers to the sounds of the Elephant Orchestra. And now at 3:30, I make myself a cup of Pilao, Brazilian coffee, as I reorient myself towards a five hour dinner outing—I will get on a bus with 30 of my closest friends and go to a restaurant in Port Louis, where the chef of greatest renown in the Indian Ocean (and how is that for a frame of reference?) will give us a talk about cuisine, then demonstrate his skills and then, of course, provide our dinner.

I have more papers to grade, and I have to reconfigure my classes to work better in this alternate reality. I have a room to reorganize after stuffing everything away in high swells (though the sailing yesterday, when we might have met Cyclone Hondo, was so smooth that I did not notice the loss of my patch!). I am tired after learning how to live on a ship, rubbing elbows with people I adore and with people I abhor (poetic license on both ends!), and having to get along well with all of them, and trying to prepare three new courses to be taught in circumstances I literally could not imagine, much less have experienced. I have had several days of seasickness and this strange oceanic trancing exhaustion that is almost pleasurable if you can surrender to it! I have led field trips in every port so far, and there are endless meetings, many of them mandatory on this college campus. This week the students suddenly realized that they are going to pass or fail classes, and they literally brought their anxiety to my door, several of them, so I put up a sign, “This is not my office; it is my home. See you in class.” Yup, the excursion has been exhausting and demanding in ways I’d never have imagined. Most of us, me included, are finding the ship food almost unbearably monotonous (mind you, there is nothing wrong with it). Elizabeth told me that between seasickness and traveler’s illness, I might really lose some weight, but who would have thought that monotony and boredom might do it? And many of us have spent undue energy trying to stay in touch with home, also reducing our here and now presence. (I am resolved to do email in the early morning when I can get a connection and to live with my loneliness the rest of the time! Ah, yes, did I forget to mention the loneliness?)

Why have I not whined before, but seemingly do so now? Because I feel as though this stop in Mauritius is a transition time for me and probably for most of us travelers. I think that now I will be able to be present more and to deeply enter the journey, after giving a lot of energy to figuring out my context and learning how to be a good citizen of it. I have this feeling now of looking up from a totally absorbing task and realizing suddenly that I am sailing around the world! I am sailing around the world.

I hope to surf or snorkel or dive or all three tomorrow, though I have nothing scheduled.

I also hope to find something pretty to wear in Mauritius because I am afraid I 'way' overemphasized function, to the neglect of form, in my packing; I am afraid I have caused myself to feel unnecessarily frumpy. Nothing a pair of sandals and pretty skirt can’t fix!

Ah, levity....

The animals!

The dawn I arrived in the port of Cape Town, I felt a strong sense of homecoming—a bit perplexing, since I have never been there! But the oldest human remains found to date came from South Africa, so perhaps some sense of ancestry floats in the dim recesses of consciousness… I know with certainty that I must return, as I have known since childhood I needed to get here.

Now the moment I have been waiting for… I did a three-hour elephant back safari at dawn in a game reserve. I got to ride the lead elephant, Jabulani (Rejoice!), who was rescued from a pit as an infant and carefully nurtured back to health over a year-long special care program. My guide was a man from Zimbabwe, Emmanuel. Emmanuel asked me if we had big parks like this in California and I told him about Yosemite and Sequoia and the animals there. He asked me what bears sound like and I replied that they roar. “Roar?” he asked. So I did a bear roar, creating much general arousal amongst guides and elephants alike. Later in the day I saw Jabulani and Emmanuel at shouting distance and asked Emmanuel how a bear sounds. “RRRRooooarrr!”

A walking ground crew with rifles led those of us on elephant back because it is a natural game park, including lions and leopards. Walking along for the ride were three baby elephants, one of them so young he could not yet coordinate his trunk, but rushed and/or mounted the other two enthusiastically at every opportunity. I have a great sequence of photos in which the moms are watching the play get increasingly rambunctious, then you see the trunks begin to reach out, the little one is swept up entirely by his mom, and the other two get gentle but definite trunks laid over them to pull them back and tuck them up to mother. At one point, I dropped my quart water bottle and Jabulani picked it up, he started to hand it back to me over the top of his head, then decided he was thirsty, put it in his mouth and crunched it, drinking the water. He gave me back the squished and empty bottle. These elephants were well trained but not perfectly obedient, not having had their spirits broken; they were happy, cooperative, and willful enough to maintain some dignity.

On that one ride I saw giraffes, zebras, Cape buffalo, warthogs, crocodiles, wildebeest, and monkeys. At the end of the ride, I bought the DVD that included African music I’d somehow missed on the safari. And, when I returned to the ship, I heard some strange ethereal music playing over the ship sound system. I thought it strange that they were playing Asian music between South Africa and Mauritius. Then I learned that I was listening to “The Elephant Orchestra.” Yes, real elephants making elephant music with giant xylophones, improvising. This treat was shared by our ethno-musicologist, Joe Moreno, who is making me a copy.

The life of animals that I saw, the number of species, the large size of the herds, the naturalness of the environment, the family groupings, the interspecies cooperation: all amazed me and delighted me. Giraffes and zebras and warthogs are typically seen together, all grazing in the same place. If only I can get some photos up, I can share some of this amazing world… a rhinoceros in the water with just a bit of head and back above water line, giving a lift to a turtle who rode on his back, and, of course, the equivalent of cow birds, happily grazing on the insects living on the happily grazing herds. I saw a family of elephants do a dust bath, close up enough to have a face full of dust. I saw a giraffe baby wobbling along with his daddy, looking around in complete wonderment, and often hiding within daddy’s long legs, his umbilical cord still hanging from his belly. I was so close to an alpha male lion that I could have reached out and touched him; instead I tucked up and took a photo as he walked past me! Of course, these lions hunt, and so do the leopards, but the overarching sense of the natural world is that it is the garden where the animals live in essential harmony, a garden we not only left but also have largely destroyed. It is sad and I felt a longing for that garden, but also the hope that we can continue to create places in which to learn our place anew.

And yesterday I read on the BBC that South Africa has approved an elephant cull, heartbreaking news to my eyes. The PETA folk say, “How much like humans do they have to be before you call it murder?” And it brings home to me that we are in dire need of an entirely new model of ethics, one that honors life while respecting the necessity of death—for all of us. In the real circle of life, yes, the impala dies, the lion dies, and the man dies, too, all having loved their lives dearly.