Luxury

Despite living in decadence compared to those around me…and I know it would add to my carbon footprint…I so so soooo want a warm shower. It has been so long.

Rashness

At the risk of making a rash posting, writing still in a kind of dazed state…I really didn’t expect you to walk away in such an unskillful way (just how I see it of course right now, not necessarily true). Just like that. Maybe that was the only way. But right now, to me, you suck, the cyber you. Again the weirdness of the cyber world freaks me out, but I guess it is just another sphere and is itself very very real, just a bit more hazy sometimes.

The biggest boots

From the Guardian Weekly:
In a mere eight days the average Briton is responsible for the same amount of carbon emissions as the average person in the world’s poorest countries will produce all year…Eight days into the new year, the average UK citizen was responsible for the production of 0.21 tonnes of carbon dioxide – the same amount as the annual tally for a person in countries such as Zambia.

Friday disconnections

Friday night and there is a revival, a loud revival, in town. Never any other kind. God is all around. And he (sorry…He) likes really really bad music. I am feeling disconnected, oh so disconnected, from my environment. Take me somewhere, anywhere tonight.

Toys R Us in PNG

After some field-based research, I have concluded that the most popular toy for small kids here, especially 2-3 year-olds, is…a sharp knife. They are really good at running full pelt with them in their fingers. And banging them around. Natural selection at work. The toy stores in the west haven’t quite caught on to the incredible potential of this toy yet.

Being in Silom

A breezy, cool (yes…), about to be stormy late afternoon. Just back from Silom, that place of jungle-juiced village leader fame. Again some tenting for me, to the sound of breakers on the reef and often rain drumming down as I lay peacefully inside, wedged there in the village, between ocean and rainforest-coated sheer limestone escarpments. In my little world. We drove back on potholed roads on old sea floor, mud, driving rain, blowing oil palms, greys upon greys misting the mountains, but gentle waves on that continuous line of reef. A group of people in the torrential downpour, standing precariously huddled in the back of the truck, some with yellow raincoats offering little protection, and…still smiling. Back in my house, which feels so cosy today. The work went well. The reef looks good. The kingfisher sat and observed, as I observed him. The lagoon was alive at night and sparks flashed from the bottom. There was so much friendliness, so many smiles, that incredible innate happiness that is life in the villages here. Who is poor? Pots of delicious food, of generosity and kindness. Children, smiling and smiling. Curiosity, stories of “where I came from”. My first time inside a haus boi, at night, with the oldest man in the village, telling stories for me. Magical stories. Of times when he was young and caught sharks with cane twine and hauled them onto his canoe. When he called out to them, sang to them to come, to fish to come to him. He is the only one left in the village who knows of those ways. And then of the magic shark, who rescued the woman and brought her back safely, who always comes when called and when someone tried to spear him turned himself into two sharks, who still come, again and again. And people there who want to adopt me into their clan. After years in PNG, my first time perhaps, if it comes to eventuate and I am adorned with shell money. But mostly, it was so welcoming and easy there, and the work is going well. It was not the spiritual, soul-captivating experience of Ungakum last week, but a different kind of warm feeling that…maybe…things will work out.

Island guys

The man thing here…a night boat ride behind the reef to the neighbouring village. Me and ten young guys, all full of life and strength, connected to the ocean, capable, beautiful. The boat was full of testosterone, sculpted bodies, sharp senses, even some twirly dreads blowing in the wind (for me…), young people in their prime. And the sky was covered in stars, some of them cascading down, the waves roared, the boat cut a bright stream of light and sparkles through the water in the warm tropical night. And...I guess...I was quite separate from everyone else in that boat, a distant observer, there by some kind of unplanned invitation, a series of accidents, but without which the whole thing would not have been happening.

Ungakum

I don’t really know what happened in Ungakum. It just did. Peace and awe. It was incredible.

An unbalanced world

I just rediscovered this going through some very old emails (the figures are probably 7 years old!):
If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:

There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education

When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent. (Not my quote).

The fevered mind

So I wasn’t going to write to my blog, for a while. But just reading yours inspired me (again), your poetic nuances. It has been a strange week in strangeness and I have been feeling like I have been losing myself. Into the cyber world. And here I am again. I became a year older and it just slipped by, as my fever rose and my energy sank. Two packages of love arrived (this is it seems where I feel comfortable using the word, Water M) and even with my fevered brow I grinned from ear to ear at their arrival from distant places. Oh what joy, hours of absorption into other worlds, pieces of you sent in their special way, each item a fragment of kindness, which made me feel oh so lucky, so excited. Perhaps you didn’t even realise the joy it would bring, every little tiny part of it. An email from a frozen land from friends of many years building exciting things. And in addition to the packages, cyber words of love, which only in the end confused me. A Dylanesque picture of Kamapa hat and Green Tara, mixed with Hendrix, Johnny Cash and cloud eagles. It is all a mystery.

This non-attachment thing is so so hard

I know it is all nothingness and to cling to moments already past is...just not good. But I will go to bed now feeling sad and the day was good until there it was in front of me, there one moment and gone the next.

Lavender's blue, dilly dally

What am I supposed to feel now? If only…? Thank you for the lavender oil, truly. Yes, it makes me sad too, can’t seem to avoid that.

More confused rambling from me

Well, I am back writing here, although best to leave things to picture images, perhaps. I am no longer quite so anonymous now…that’s me (instantly recognisable, of course)! Hi Mum! (I know you are no longer paying attention because you think your daughter is a bit weird, although you knew that all along). Am I writing this blog more for me than anything else? Trying to get back into the swing of writing here, but always asking myself why I am writing and if anything I write makes any sense at all. But…I have a phone line again and it took me sooooo many visits to the Telikom office I might as well make good use of it now. But I am (as so often) not sure where to start as it has just been crazy times – again, still. I would like to say this one is for you, but it isn’t really. Yet, anyway. I don’t know you very well at all yet. But you intrigue me. And that is good for now. But, yes, I am wondering how “unhinged” you really might be. It would of course be just like me to be intrigued by unhingedness. Throw in some tao contemplations while you are balancing on a surfboard and you have the recipe for…some kind of adventure, I think. Bear in mind, I am very wary. I dive in head first and then swim away again, sneak back, dive deep, circle around. Act confused. Just me. And today and the past week I have very much been thinking about good friends who have just been hit hard sideways by…I think it was by the profit-hungry forces of the planet. And just some very bad luck as well. D, on the phone to you, I so so wanted to fix it all, just make it all better for you. And I am so worried about you. No matter how much I say and how sweetly I say it, it is so so hard for you and I can’t help much. And I don’t know why it is all so unfair. And so shall I quit now after all this battling because I can’t work for people like that and I need to stick together with like-minded good energy, or what shall I do? And of course now I am even more alone, but for now I will be thinking much more about your sadness and wondering what small things I can do to help you in some way through all this. The retreat is a deal, it truly is. But first you have to get well and bouncy again. It’s a beautiful, bright, sunny evening and I need to go across the channel to say goodbye to yet another person. And go along with the Tau-Mau combination, which should be fun, I think. I might even beat them at pong. Oh, and Berkeley Man, yes there has been a lot of craziness going on here, and I didn’t write for a while. You will hear about soon, and you will be a little shocked. And just why do I make things so cryptic here?

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