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....