When I dreamt, I found the spaces in between…

It’s come to my attention that some people missed the link I gave way back in January to see pictures from the trip. Go here to see everything we’ve got: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drtrix/

Enjoy!

(this is a sam flores print - thanks, sam, your work is always so close to my heart)

The more I integrate back into my life in the city, the more I realize that my priorities have certainly shifted, that my desire for more steadiness and connection are still here, and that I’m fulfilling that desire in a way that’s surprising to me.  I’m making decisions differently than I would have four months ago.  In some ways, the wishy-washiness of my decision making style has dropped away; sometimes, this results in me having less tact - but it also results in me getting what I want, or closer to what I want, from non-ideal situations.  Empowering, certainly.  And I think, ultimately, once I’m more comfortable with it, this will be a significant and worthwhile change.  

It is hard, though, being a month out from traveling, especially now back to work, planning for the details of school, choosing the responsibilities I’m willing to incorporate back into my life.  The surrealness (and really, the realness) of the wondering/wandering supertwin combo seeps out of my perception day by day, becoming more of an intellectual exercise than any real and present experience.  My stories turn into packaged goods, complete with branding and 30 second elevator pitches.  And the speed and individualism and consumption I see around me already becomes so normalized.  So normal!

Yes, I know that this is how it works.  Yes, I understand that this is how we integrate, that we can’t really fight it.  Yes yes.  I know.  I find it all so interesting to watch it unfold, though.  Let me mourn the loss. 

I’ve picked up my meditation practice again, after a four day silent retreat up at Spirit Rock in the woods and the meadows (with the wild turkeys, and lizards, and hawks, and crows, and frogs, and the delicious, sweet, rich, full silence).  It was a last crescendo of my surreality before returning to San Francisco to reconstruct what we all mutually consider the real.  And now that I’m carrying that practice back with me, (over the mountains, down the highway, across the Golden Gate, through neighborhoods, into my parking lot, through the front door, on the zafu), I watch.  

We are fascinating creatures, thinking we know so much.  In my humility from traveling, I declare “I don’t know anything!”, (thinking I know so much about humility), and then, voila! I’m back where I started, thinking I know so much. 

So.  Sit.  Watch.  Forget to watch.  Bring it all back.  

Be humble and lose all humility simultaneously.  Bring it all back. 

Love.  Care.  Have gratitude.  Lose it.  Find imperfection.  Bring it all back.  

Laugh and rejoice in the paradox that it is to be human; it’s a gift so easily forgotten and so sweet to remember.    

   

(”love comes from the most unexpected places…”, by woolloomooloo.)

Traveling allowed me let go of a bunch of life stuff that clutters my brain: the constant surge of information through the internets, the competing needs of friend, families, colleagues, communities, the apparent obligations of being a late 20-something in San Francisco, the special brand of multi-faceted-supremely-balanced-circus-act of compromise needed in these social circles, and the ego that is wrapped up in all of it. Somehow I got on a plane sans laptop and as time passed, it just disappeared. I experienced what suspiciously felt like freedom. Freedom from a certain type of limits, and tethers, and boundaries. And it’s hard to come back to limits, after you’ve felt that freedom.

I wonder how to find clarity and simplicity in the United States, in San Francisco, in False Profit, in my relationships and in work and in school. While I don’t think most people would admit it, in this city we value a combination of over-extension, multi-tasking, efficiency, grandiosity, creativity, and individuality that simultaneously makes us all a bit mad. I’m no longer fond of it, and wonder just how much I need to change of my habits to move away from it. I wonder if other things (nebulous Things, what are you?) need to change as well. I’m uncertain.

Yes, uncertainty! And humility! Welcome to the guesthouse of my heart!

Uh, so Nepal is amazing. 

We’re already talking about coming back out here to trek to the mountains and then cross over into Tibet. 

If India is a mean old monkey, Nepal is a baby yak. 

So India isn’t all that bad, though for a couple of weeks it sort of felt like it was, in fact, all bad.  Here are some random observations:

Hinduism is perhaps the most intense and passionate religion I’ve ever encountered, at least its manifestation in northern India.  I think I mentioned this in my previous post.  And in its passion is hidden (or maybe not hidden, maybe blatantly out in the open) the sexual repression that is so deeply held in this culture.  I have never seen so many sexually frustrated men in one place: the way they dance with one another, the timbre of the music, the way they look at western women (and good lord, some of the bullshit they say to us), and the way the young men talk about girls.  And ironically, all of this separation of the sexes is supposed to reflect respect for women?  I saw little of this.  Yes, yes, I have a distinctly American feminist perspective.  Too bad.

Being a female tourist in India can be a lonely experience.  The men wouldn’t talk to me because I was with Trix (though, if I wasn’t with him, I can’t say that the conversation was all that welcome - Indian men, please stop staring at my boobs and treating me like a sex kitten), and the women wouldn’t talk to me because they don’t talk to anyone except each other, apparently.  This combines to create this odd visible/invisible position: I was stared at relentlessly while in public, but no one would speak to me, except the odd person here or there.  Totally bizarre.

The food was for the most part great!  This was an excellent change from s.e. Asia, where the food is typically (and surprisingly) so so.

Spirituality and religion are no trifling matter in India.  Unlike s.e. Asia where Buddhism is integral, but also somewhat removed or mundane (which to clarify from a way earlier post about Laos, I generally expected), religion in India is essential and rich and unmistakeable.  You cannot walk 10 feet without walking into a shrine, or a holy man, or a kid selling offerings.  It is simply the fiber with which India is woven. 

Eh, all of these words are mundane and insufficient.  I’m still reeling a bit from the experience to be able to capture them - or really, to feel like capturing them.  Maybe this is all best for in person stories, no?

written March 13th:

India feels too big for words, and I’ve been struggling to find words appropriate to encapsulate my experiences there.  It is seductive, and cruel, and flagrant.  It pushes and begs and cackles.  It bats its eyes.  It’s cheeky. And it’s only now that I’m in the safe haven of Nepal (a considerably calmer, cleaner, nicer neighbor) that I can even consider writing about India.

Hinduism, certainly the most passinate and sensuous religion I’ve encountered.  So passionate it can be simultaneously hilarious nd frightening (and not in some distant intelectual way, like how Christianity can be frightening, but in the up front, in my face sort of way).  Sadhus, ceremonies, chanting men, smoke incense fire, an energy that pushes itself onto you, whether you like it or not, whether you’ve invited it or told it to fuck off.  Everyday life, in the market on the streets, around the ghats, has this pushing moving energy.  And, not surrisingly, i’ve found this to be incredibly overwhelming.

But let me back up a little and give some context.  I don’t want to mislead you - all of India is not so intense and I am not so sensitive to not be abe to handle it.  My last post referred to a certain attack by bacteria, bovine, and broads (eunuch tranny ones at that):

The bacteria: To be expected.  This happens out here to us delicate Westerners - I’m sure I’m not the only white erson to have blessed Delhi’s train station with, well, vomit.  I was happy to have missed any human bystanders and considered that a resounding success.  Stomach emties, I had a lovely night’s sleep on a sleeper train (little did my compartment-mates know that they too lucily had a good night’s sleep: my puking hapened five minutes before boarding).  So yes, bacteria.  Check.

The bovine: Not quite so expected.  I guess if I had given it any real thought, I may have come to the conclusion that walking in front of a cow who is intent on getting somewhere might best be avoided.  But, I hadn’t given it thought and so swiftly had a cow head (and its two nubbly horn stubbles - thank goodness this thing wasn’t full grown) pushing me down the street.  I dn’t recommend this - it hurts.  Later the next week, however, I was twice blessed bovine-style, as if in reconciliation for the earlier headbutting, by two cows - one who nuzzled my armpit with her wet nose, and another who deigned to lick my food (think giant cat tongue).  I’ve considered this a show of goodwill, and by my last day in India I’d taken to patting cows in return. 

(Also, don’t get me started on yaks.  I now love yaks - thye have the sweetest moon-pie doe eyes on the planet.  They can also stick their tongues neatly into their nostrils, as if their tongues were specifically designed for this purpose - and maybe they were!)

This leaves us the (tranny prostitute) broads: We’re in Jaiselmar Rajasthan, a very old fort desert town.  Lots of people, cows, noise, pollution, oen sewers, scammers, merchants.  It’s hot and colorful and the most amazing - I’m enthralled.  And, sparing the details, because it’s a better story in person, a prostitute (think Indian drag queen if you need an image) and her john grabbed my breasts, in broad daylight, in public.  After pushing them away, losing it a few minutes later, deciding to tell the tourist police (not an easy decision - will they listen? do they care? will they blame me? I felt like a classic 1960s America sexual assault victim), and having the police tell me there was nothing to be done about it, I was left with a very deep disgust for this aspect of Indian culture - around gender and sex, and for Indian men in general.

All the observations I had been making, dispassionately, that men would never address me in conversation when I was with Stephen (I was always referred to by a pointed finger and the words “she” and “her”), the staring, the fact that I had to wear a shawl to deflect the staring (only worked partially)… all of this experience joined forces with being attcked, and drew out all my rage and feelings of helplessness around this question of gender and having a voice.

I spent a good two weeks, in increasingly intense cities, contemlating voicelessness, while feeling less and less welcome.  (The staring, in my case because of how I look came from both men and women, and was unrelenting.  You know how little kids stare without shame?  It seems that almost all adults in northern India do the same.  It’s not welcoming, and after days and days of it, gets terribly irritating).  What does it mean to have an empowered voice in my usual context, and then lose it in another?  What does this voicelessness mean for local women - how does it manifest, how do they use it, how does it use them?  Also, less thoughtful questions such as “What the fuck is wrong with these people?!” (not my finest moment, but at least it was honest). 

Women are simply second class in this culture.  And this was something I couldn’t accept.  In short, I couldn’t figure out how to even exist in India.  Talk about an identity mind fuck.

And so, with a flip of the sexual harrassment switch, what was funny amazing overwhelming turned into terrible overwhelming, and all the other fucked-up gender role experiences I had and continued sexual harrassment were amplified into the mantra “India and I are not friends”.

More on this in my next post…

silk(ish) shawl: 100 rupees
shiva statue: 300 rupees
camel safari: 650 rupees

being attacked by bacteria, cows, and eunuch tranny prosititutes: priceless. 

or something.

more to come on yesterday’s adventures. by the way, india is beautiful.