iwanotes

Breathing into Tango

2006-03-31T12:28:00.000-08:00

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Written somewhere in April.

Time has passed, and I am now no longer happy to do what I have been doing over the last two years, which was to be just what I happened to be at any given time, but feel like I've got to do what I've got to do because I'll be what I'll be doing. Or something...
Printed out (free) business cards with a lovely sunflower on blue background, on which I advertise myself as a gardener, trained in the Eternal Garden of Love, I'll trim your bushes! And another set of free cards as an Ayurvedic Massage Therapist. Both under the nom de plume Evan Greene. My name has undergone this change because British people wouldn't instinctively how to pronounce Iwan, and as to Kuchenberg...
I live in Totnes now. In Devon, South West England, pretty much Northern Hemisphere. Fell in love with the place, fell in love in the place, found a life waiting here for me, embraced it. Not without resistance, not without wild winds of the drifters drift threatening to blow my erratic-nomadic soul away and tearing apart the soft sail of love that Nushka and me are patiently putting together day by day, by our own hands. What wind in my sails now? What passion, what drive? Love as always. For many things and Beings. And the steering wheel of reason is right in my hand. So I am on this ship, and sometimes the nights get so dark, cloudy and rainy, that I swear I can't see my own hand. Stubbornly sailing right through the English winter, no soy marinero soy capitan, y el equipaje de mi barco se vuelve loco en este oceano salvage, there's got to be a passage, a floating branch or a bird announcing land, announcing spring.
The good days will come. I'm skinned like somebody who just comes back from a long journey. No money whatsoever. Putting a strain on my relationship, making it hard to enjoy anything really. Feel the feel of an unemployed prick. Good things came already: have a job as massage therapist on a detox retreat, but that's only one week per month. Living in the most expensive country in the world.
Exploring the remotest corners of consciousness, sailing the astral and trying to read light signs of a lighthouse, out in the cold Devonish night, full moon on the sea. New way, new frame of mind, sedentary now. Easy to overlook beauty in the familiarity of things. But her love, although more deeply familiar everyday, retains that wild beauty of a snowfox leaping out of pure playfullness into the first spring breeze. You can tell I am becoming Argentinian. Tango playing right now, tango very loud, as all evening allready, Tango que te quiero Tango. And with Nushka we are exploring new subtle dimensions of dance in our light bodies, and that is the most noteworthy thing encountered these days and probably the reason why I started to write all this in the first place: dancing very slowly together,we felt our arms creating a living circle of energy, through which every information could be easily passed, and where our immobile dance became the rolling of something in there, in the lower body, spiralling it up, for both of us, spinning and whirling from the inside, erect spine and composed poise from the outside, Tango is every spiritual tradition and everything is Tango. And if it is not, you can always turn it into such. Tango-shopping, Tango-fucking, Tango-praying.
The Turning of the Screw, and other stories of the Ayahuasca, remain big teachings to be completely assimilated. A tale of firmnes - firmeza - without which our life is just a little bit too flasque, without which love is just a fire without heat, a thought without strength. Don't deliberate whether your offering to the sun is worthwhile or not, you have been doing just that all your life. Start to shine with all you have, all you can, all that is truly you. Be beautiful, finnally. Be big. Hafiz says that

"The difference between a good artist and a great one is: the novice will often lay down his tool or brush, then pick up an invisible club on the mind's table and helplessly smash the easels and jade. Whereas the vintage man no longer hurts himself or anyone, and keeps on sculpting Light".
So Firmness it is, discipline and determination. An ordered lifestyle. Something that looks from the outside like "Mr Everybody" and ressembles even more the teachings and admonitions my parents gave me along the way. But of course, what matters here, is the very way in which I came to this, which was very much mine. Learning things. Slowly becoming a man. Filling discipline and determination up with love...from the inside. What matters is not the "lifestyle", nor the places I go nor the things I do. What matters is the inside. Turning everything I thought up side down. Living in the world as a piscean creature. Rambling on. Always. Small sentences. No verbs. No need. No need for anything but everything...has been my motto for a long time. I have been precluding me from the enjoyment of many a fine thing in life because of just this: waiting for something higher, the perfect light, when it's all always already there, here. Hold my hand.
Show me spring: magnolia trees in full bloom, cherry blossom under blue sky, silence of green grass filled only with the busy humming of bees and little robbin sitting in the tree. Lying here with Nushka by side, breathing.
Or breathing into the deep sense of silence and peace of a treatment room I enter, when a person has consented to lay her body down on my massage table, and we're having a silent dance together, for an hour. Priviledged communication. I feel grateful and humble.
This is it. This is all there is. People dying, people living. Sun rising and sea licking the shores of a magic island. I'm living on an island. Island records. On this day.

A Life in the Day

2005-10-24T09:44:00.000-07:00

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We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes,
tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into
and swum up as if rivers of wisdom,
characters we have climbed into as if trees,
fears we have hidden in as if caves.

I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead.
I believe in such a cartography - to be marked by nature,
not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women
on buildings.
We are communal histories, communal books.
We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.
All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.

(from 'The English patient')

Attempt at a self-portrait in the light of my relationship with my voice, inner/outer, spoken/sung as experienced over the course of my life.

2005-10-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

Letter for Chloe,

I was a silent baby. I came to the world with the umbilical cord wrapped twice around my neck, and they say that I was blue. My mother claims I was the perfect baby because she could just sit me down anywhere and I would stay there, sitting quietly, until she picked me up. Adrian, my two year elder brother, was the voice in my early childhood, and I was the ear. We were extremely close, and while he was the leading, dynamic, extrovert, nervous and articulate kid, I got to be known as the quiet Beatle (we're four brothers), prone to moments of melancolia spent in isolation, or lost in a world of books and story-telling tapes. One of my favourite characters was a red haired little gnome called Pumuckl, and for years I spoke in his high-pitched funny voice.

In many ways, I can see this silent and slightly phlegmatic child inside of me as a loss of energy, something being muted. I am not talking here about the salvatory and golden silence of being with oneself (as a child or later) but rather the unwillingness to stand one's ground in society, in this case the family circle. But with the beginning of school, there suddenly was a space in which I could be somebody different, and I could live out my extrovert side, much to the surprise of my parents when they would see me outside of the family setting.
One important aspect of my childhood - please don't laugh at this - was being a boyscout; I think old Baden Powell was the one who introduced me to group ritual and chanting. Slow and silent movements alternating with question-answer singing always left me with a mood of archaic tribal belonging and celebrating. More so, during the summer camps, the goodnight song - 'Abendlied' - sung in the dark, with all the boyscouts holding hands, was a prayer to the forest, and I remember the taste of my voice going inward, very smooth and soft. Those moments had an intense magic, and I could for the first time witness the sheer power of music, or should I say Spirit, or Spirit of Music?

So I had tasted a singing coming from a place of Spirit, but I would loose it soon, as I entered another lifechapter, where singing came largely from the throat and the (hugely) growing ego of a wild adolescent. Came the time of playing in bands, the charms of drugs, sex and rock n' roll on a smalltown scale (compared to British standards, I was a choirboy, I think). My first public appearance on guitar and vocals was in a church, where I shouted that I didn't believe in God...I played the guitar in a funk band called 'Discoidal Mogul', was a rapper in a hardcore-crossover band, a background vocalist and bass player in a Nirvana cover-band... On pictures of me singing on stage at the time, I have quite swollen neck veins, turning red from screaming... What I remember most of these days, is the exhilarating feeling of reaching out to the audience, making people move; I am credited with and feel an infectuous energy emanating from me as soon as I step unto stage, I always completely embodied the 'story' of what I was singing about, to the point where I was almost 'all by myself', engrossed with myself, while at the same time putting it all out there. Ah yes, I was a post-pubertic performer!

Moving to Brussels for my studies, the bands slowly collappsed, and things got quiter, musically speaking. My girlfriend at the time had an incredibly powerful voice, we sang a lot together, but I remember experiencing my voice to be blocked (just as on an energetical level, I was blocked by her 'verbal diarrhea' as she called it, I found myself in a relationship not unlike that with my elder brother, being the ear again and not allowing myself to 'voice' my concerns and needs). In these years of studies, I repeatedly tried to join choirs, experiencing the deep emotion of religious songs and the sweet union of unison, but never stayed there for long, looking for a different kind of sound-environment...

In due time I finished my studies, my long-term relationship (rather violently and traumatically) ended and I found myself in a place of relative void and silence. I could not and would not resume teenage songwriting, singing songs on the guitar felt unsatisfactory; I had no means, no vehicle to communicate myself to myself, and I wasn't sure of who that 'I' was in the first place. Grief and guilt had veiled my voice and my song-world in such a way that I decided to stop everything I was doing and put all my energy in the task of recovering, rediscovering my life-force, my life-joy, my singing joy throat. For a very long time after the end of my relationship, my throat was in severe pain, I felt like being continiously strangled. This revived the early memory of feeling muted, a little bit grey and dull, half dead, really.

So I went on a wandering journey in order to see how people where managing to live on this Earth, I had everything to learn. I am still on this journey, and I hope it will never end. I have never found, never owned my own voice, and in a way never owned my own life. But as I am starting to reclaim my life more and more, to reclaim my natural birthright of pure joy, abundance and contentment, I realise that just as I search for the company of happy shiny people, I seek for the company of a voice in me that is free of all that 'story of Iwan', a voice prior to that conflict, a voice that thunders powerfully through me and caresses me like a breeze. A voice to take me home. I remember singing the SA-RE-GHA scale with its movements, with Gavino Divino, on a summer camp in beautiful Devon not so long ago. I wasn't singing anymore, I was being sung, my body elongated and stretched every movement to its full extent, without my own participation, it seemed. It felt like a flower opening up, the feeling of sweetness and springtime-joy moved me to tears, it was transpersonal beauty. We are (I am) recovering from a long numbness.

I remember sitting on a balcony of a wooden house in a lush northern Indian valley, Oming into the rain. What most struck me then was the quality of the silence that began after the sound ended, I really sing because of my love for silence. The silence between notes. The silence underneath, within and behind notes.

The arabic lute, the oud, beautifully plays around a thick surrounding silence. I started to play it in Egypt. There, in a little hut on a beach in the Sinai, an english excentric, half-crazy-wiseman-nutter going by the name of Calvin introduced me to Rumi by handing me his ragged and artistically mended copy of Coleman's book. It certainly looked more like a newly discovered Dead Sea scroll, and I plunged like a thirsty fish into Rumi's vast ocean. He had me burning again, he infected me with his passion and love for everything that is living, with his yearning and longing for God who is underneath, within and behind everything that lives. I did not want to sing abstract all-encompassing Oming on end, I do not fancy exploring the buddhist's emptiness, I no longer want to shut myself off and retreat in my cave in order to find something I've lost on my way to the Earth. I want to embrace the world and take my place among the humans, I want to sit down in this circle and sing my love... and I need a new language to do it!

I am going through big changes; I am being guided and worked on, layers are falling off and I'm growing young again. When - soon inch'Allah - I'll be truly naked, things will fall into place and I will find a form to whrap my love-singing in. All I need to do now is indulge, celebrate the joy of being alive, which you - dear Chloe - so magnificiently embody. 'Sing your note out loud!' says Rumi, and I'll go wherever he tells me to go...

(to laugh. completely. outside and inside, with all the breath of life! )

Totnes, October 2005.

Schreiben

2005-09-29T13:09:00.000-07:00

“ Ja: - wer denn soll lesen, was ich in diese Hefte schreibe! Und doch, glaube ich, gibt es kein Schreiben ohne die Vorstellung, dass jemand es lese, und waere dieser jemand nur der Schreiber selbst. Dann frage ich mich auch: Kann man schreiben, ohne eine Rolle zu spielen? Man will sich selbst ein Fremder sein. Nicht in der Rolle, wohl aber in der unbewussten Entscheidung, welche Art von Rolle ich mir zuschreibe, liegt meine Wirklichkeit. Zuweilen habe ich das Gefuehl, man gehe aus dem Geschriebenem hervor wie eine Schlange aus ihrer Haut. Das ist es; man kann sich nicht niederschreiben, man kann sich nur haeuten. Aber wen soll diese tote Haut noch interessieren! Die imer wieder einmal auftauchende Frage, ob denn der Leser jemals etwas anderes zu lesen vermoege als sich selbst, eruebrigt sich: Schreiben ist nicht Kommunikation mit Lesern, auch nicht Kommunkation mit sich selbst, sondern Kommunikation mit dem Unaussprechlichen. Je genauer man sich auszusprechen vermoechte, um so reiner erschiene das Unaussprechliche, das heisst die Wirklichkeit, die den Schreiber bedraengt und bewegt. Wir haben die Sprache, um stumm zu werden. Wer schweigt, ist nicht dumm. Wer schweigt, hat nicht einmal eine Ahnung, wer er nicht ist. „

- Max Frisch, „Stiller“

...Wer singt sagt keine Dummheiten. Er singt!

My Eskimo friend

2005-09-28T03:42:00.000-07:00

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She. Her name is Susan. They call her Suzi. She’s got husky-blue eyes, a fair complexion. She says she is being “kept alive by machines”. She is on dialysis: four years ago, her kidneys failed, since then she has to go to hospital three times a week to have her blood purified by machines in a four hour intervention where they stick a needle in the veins of her left arm, where they've installed a fistulla. She is thirty-one now. An amazing dancer, an amazing sweetness.
She grew up in Belfast, with the bombs, the hatred, the deluded IRA fanatics… When asked to explain what the conflict is about, she quotes an old man: “ Anyone who thinks he understands anything about anything doesn’t really know what’s happening here!” Irish humour is devastating. After being in England for four years, she still often shocks the back-padding, overly apologetic Brits by her directness, considered rude over here. Once she had a terrible desert in a restaurant, and when the waiter asked her if it was good, she answered with the biggest smile on her face “no, it’s really shite, but I’ll still eat it because I’m really hungry”!
Coming to Totnes with its big alternative organic-warrior scene and its two Buddhist colleges, she jokes that as an Irish protestant she was raised to hate Catholics, so here she decided to hate Buddhists, because “they take life too seriously and wear bad shoes”. She is studying Alexander Technique here. Keeping her back perfectly straight while she hoovers the treatment-room of the institute in the middle of the night. I watch her and she is a little shy about it. She has a reputation of being chronically unpunctual. Her mother, Margareth, wanted to call her Anouchka, but that was too exotic back in the day in Northern Ireland. She died last year. She was a terrible cook, but a beautiful woman with long black hair, big almond eyes and unstoppable laughing fits. She sent her daughter little parcels with the worst kitsch to distant England. When a nurse called Suzy into the hospital room one day, she said “no, that’s my little Anouchka”! Her Father is called Denis. The mother had once remarked to her that his name was written with only one ‘n’, like ‘penis’, as a consequence of witch she addressed her father as Penis in the following letters. He never commented on it. He didn’t really finish school, worked for years as a ‘rep’ (representant) and did quite well. They could afford to buy a bungalow in Belfast. Then, one day, he invented himself a diploma and got a high level post in a multinational pharmaceutical company. He had never managed people before, so when all these highly qualified people turned to him saying “Denis, I have a problem here, what should I do?” his answer – invariably - was “well, what do you think you should do?” He was very good at his new job! Two weeks after he started in the company, the labour union went on a massive strike, and he had no idea how to deal with it. So one night he visited the union leader – who lived two streets down from him – and told him he had no idea how to deal with the situation. So they sat down, had some tea, and the union leader basically told him what to concede to. The next day at the company, they orchestrated a fake ‘big argument’ between them, so that the union leader would look good in front of his mates, and they ‘reached’ a deal. He, too, has cancer, has been operated already, is in for another...Her brother, Simon, is two years older than her, a writer and odd. He had written a novel about one of the ‘disappeared’, a woman who was abducted by the IRA one night she was in her bath. They dragged her out naked in front of her kids and she was never seen again. This was the punishment for having offered last help to a soldier who was dying on her doorstep, on a day there had been a shooting on her street. It gets more horrid: when Simon, who was living in Southern Ireland, went up to the victim’s family to go through the manuscript with them, it turned out that one of the five sons was a member of the IRA, who had killed his mother, and got very angry with Simon wanting to publish this. So shortly afterwards, around Christmas time, Simon is sitting in his local pub near Dingle, South Ireland, when a man comes up to him and tells him “ by New Year you have to be out of the country”. A local policeman confirmed him that they were being serious with this threat. So he packed his things and left to England, where he now teaches creative writing at the University of Leeds. His novel never managed to get published. Now he’s written a second novel, about his sister, basically. It’s the story of a guy who has a sister who’s on dialysis, and she disappears with a certain Dr. Death who helps people die, and he has two weeks to find her, because that’s the amount of time she can survive without dialysis.
I hear that when her kidneys failed, her partner left and ran away. I figure she has strong views about people not being there for others.
She meets a traveller and likes him. When she touches me, it feels like the open sea.
I call her the Eskimo Princess.

AFRICA BY BUS

2005-09-23T15:19:00.000-07:00

It
is

It is time to expose the foundations of an idea that has blossomed up above my head lately, quite some time ago actually, seven months to the day actually, or so…
It is time to share with all friends and people of peace ideas about my project;

Working title: ‘Creative Caravan going down the coast of Africa’!
The idea - in a word - is SHARING!

I have this vision of 10 to 20 people (a couple of Range Rovers or Mercedes buses, my big round Egyptian tent, maybe tippies, solar panels for amplification..) starting a creative journey down to the Motherland. The idea is to arrive at any given place, set up the little village and have a first night of proper ‘performance’ including music, story-telling, dance, healing space, kids’ corner, etc…Of course, long nights of celebration with the local public will follow, we will meet the musicians, magicians and story-tellers who will perform for us. They will roast a lamb for us and we in turn will toast some tofu for them, or whatever. Then we will all jam and possibly tour the land together, for a while, till we’ve met all the cousins in the South and we’ll be heading downwards, to another country: Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Burkina, Mali, Guinea, Ghana, Togo, Benin,…

I already have a handful of enthusiastic musicians on board, not a date, yet. Possibly within the three next years, or maybe I’ll wait to be a qualified ‘Naked Voice’ facilitator. Anyway, that’s the plan. And if you feel a strong urge to contribute, participate, elaborate, collaborate, investigate?…Share opinions, experiences, know someone who’s all up for such an idea, has been going down already…
Please write me!
I’m thankful for any kind of input.

Mama Africa on my Mind.

In the Brunchtime of my Life

2005-09-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

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In the Brunchtime of my Life/when we're carrying on with what we were doing just because we enjoy it so much/ just before the middle of the day/ when things start to have to be thought about – getting done later in the day/ but now world like a lush breakfast table shared with friends and a bottle of champagne/ bubbles of joy/ accept abundance/ please have it all/ the world is my university/ following only the Law of Attraction and having International Relations/ Elation really/ feel fresh yes please ah the beard is off/ cut my hair myself in the bath today total empowering experience/ haircuts used to be experienced as a Samson’ish ordeal/ green superfood on my morning porridge/ new strings on my guita’/ muchcha music in my life/ what else?

I’m currently settled in the ‘Castle Lodge’ where Faith and Phil live. I met Faith ‘the Voice’ at the body camp in August. Just in case you wondered who all these foreign people in a foreign land are, that host me. Little bit outside Totnes, with panoramic view on Devon’s rolling hills and the Dartmoor afar. In exchange for my staying here, I work in the garden and house, now preparing a huge party in the house for tomorrow. Setting the clocks for the last potential excess before period of purest purity once again, because much work is to do and voice likes clean air and healthy lifestyle, so I listen to her…

Moving to the country. It’s all fairly simple. And no further explanation is needed. So I’ll better stop here, or else I might come up with the cleverest thing in the world to say…:-)

Peace and Happiness to All

Return from the Valley

2005-06-23T05:59:00.000-07:00

Fall with me
into the ditch
on Love's Highway.

I so enjoy sitting here with You.

I am a blind man -
You are Light,
along this dark road.

No passerby will even notice
our humble celebration
in the dust of their days.

Why don't we undo this winding road?

Joyful is the path,
and the Valley smiles at us.

We sit,
and you hold me by the shoulders.
Around us, everything is red.

My helper.My guide.My ladder.

Send me to Earth. Give me a Soul. Watch me go. The valley of ME.

The Path leads through the Valley.
Joyful is the Path.

Starmusic still in your hair,
let me be done with phrases and
come home to the silence within that music.

________________

I have lived for several weeks in this little sheperd’s hut in a mini-private valley just for myself, somewhere in Jhibbi valley, Himachal Pradesh. The poem was written a few weeks before I went there, just one of these things that tend to happen in India... The first two weeks were spent with Naomi from Queens, NY, then about a month alone. God bless the intensity of both of these periods and the difference between the two. To get to the hut, I had to walk for a good 30 min. from the little Jhibbi village, leave the main road and climb up a little path into my valley, along flowers and big stones, passing the little Krishna shrine at the entrance of the valley. The valley had a little stream of cold mountain water, where I could shower in and wash my dishes, drink…Every morning a crow came flying on the roof to wake me up at six, steal my soap and eat my left overs. Salamanders shared the room, as well as giant spiders and one scorpion on the wall above my bed. The monkeys stayed at a prudent distance, I could observe them jumping from tree to tree or bathing in the little pool down there. In the daytime, the village women would lead their five or six cows into the valley, screaming to lead them, hitting them ferosciously.
I would tippically start my day at six (woken up by my friend the crow) with 45 min of sitting, dwelling in pure being. In those moments before sunrise, or late at night, alone in a lost valley in a foreign country, it was easy to forget my name, my history, the importance attached to my thoughts. Just sitting. A very sweet and intimate connection with the Being that is at the core of us. To wake up and not entertain any kind of particular relationship with oneself, just to be. Natural state. Immediate and childlike. That’s, I think, what the overused term “meditation” means, something very simple and quite natural.
It is equally true though that during all this time, I was living with all my loved ones, and especially my immediate family members, inside of me. And the art of meditation, at its beginning at least, requires to leave the world be what it is, and turn completely inside. Later, then, would it be embraced with a new love. At my point, there was a conflict there, because with memories and feelings, identification would ensue, and one is easily lost in fruitless daydreaming.
I am now a more present person, and my life quality is greatly enhanced. I see it when sitting around a fire at night with people; their eyes turn glassy, with a fixed gaze, they are lost in a dream world of their thoughts. I am conscious of myself. When thoughts arise, I am conscious of the one that is experiencing them, the witness in the back.
Why I’m writing this, I’m not sure; if you think it’s all bullocks, just skip it.

I won’t describe the period after march 16, when I learned about the departure of the dear lover of flowers, my beloved grandmother Nonna. I won’t go into the chronological account of my whereabouts and many meetings, because she is no longer reading it, and these events are so far away by now that it would probably bore the hell out of me. It’s history now. Memories of feelings, not the feeling itself. The past is death. It is also living on in every cell of my body. I carry a corpse with me. And I embody life right now. Today in London, I feel very dead and very alive at the same time. …
So my father invited me to come down and celebrate his 60th B-day with the whole family in Austria, and that was a real treat. Joy of belonging, of loving togetherness; gratitude that we’re all safe and alive. And I stayed on in Belgium, welcoming the cousins and aunt from Argentina which I had never seen before, and that was the summer’s second love-blow of feeling family-rootedness deep within. It’s something archaic, something organic.
Then I went to the UK for two weeks, and this is where I am still now, four or five weeks later. Going with the flow, my life is as uncertain and unpredictable as ever, beautiful and rich as never. With the obligatory blind spot in the middle. I wouldn’t write if I was perfectly content. To sit in absolute stillness is the noblest human posture possible. As for now, I am left with my little words, helpless magical symbols. Which leads me to my future plans, my passion and hopefully dedication for the times to come: the voice beyond words. Just that clear space of one’s own unique and true inner voice. I want to find mine. Gonna take classes with Chloe Goodchild in London and Bristol, seminars that explore the depth of voice through a lot of silence. Making a lot of music outdoors this summer, I realised how our perception of the silence is altered after we have been chanting for a while. Sitting in the middle of a huge stonecircle at Scorhill, Devon, with Eliza’s overtones nearby, I felt that presence in the voice. Music powerful medicine. So I’m signing up to this voice course, my aim is to become a singing facilitator. It has been since I first attended a singing workshop with Joseph Clarck back in Brussels, a long time ago. Gavino Divino at the “Celebrate the Body” camp was another of these important people, and singing four harmonies Gregorian laments with beautiful Helen was a reminder that nowhere else do I fell so alive, present and burning as in that space.
Now in Diana’s kitchen, my sweet sister of despair. For we are in despair, carrying this irremediable sense of void into whatever life we encounter. Something was shattered, and who knows what it takes to mend us? Is time all we need? We have overcome the tragedy, only to find ourselves in the subtle realm of a sober, flat day-to-day despair. Emptiness of things. La nausee? Music, then, is needed and felt more than ever, a physical impact on the dead body. Music has the ability to give solace, to stir the heart, to speak on a spiritual level where our words fail us. Music as an invocation. An invitation.
“Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.”

Don’t accept any consolation, Rumi. Nothing but the highest truth of yourself. Wash yourself off yourself. Be melting snow.

I’ll go, wherever Rumi appears in my life. A living guide.

Nusrat singing now. Sitting by the fire at the “Spirit of Music” camp, listening to Jim and Jim’s brother Jimmy sing in perfect duo, I had to think that, had I had that twin brother, we would probably have sung like that together then. I miss Abel. I love pumpkin-orange-ginger jam with cinnamon in the winter. And women, too. And I’m loosing my memory, though that’s probably for the better. Maybe Adi’s biggest problem is his elephantesque memory…Dreamt of him and Max parachuting the other night; learnt on the next day that they had effectively jumped that very same day. Connection status: established.
Addictions: in the end, I am not that un-gifted for them. Heavily on meat before I left for India, I dropped it there. Only to fall back on chocolate and white sugar on my return. Will drop that one now. Pricelesness of living food.

The other day, I jumped on a bus to London I wasn’t planning to take. Arrived here with just a toothbrush. My shirt is starting to feel “not fresh”. Gotta get myself back down to Totnes, rated the second “coolest” place in the world after San Fransisco… Jimi Hendrix remains unable to write a truly happy song. So does Jeff Buckley. The stuff modern music is made of is psychologically unsound, just wrong. Beautiful and wrong. The “ I can’t live without you” kind of thing…But positive-affirmation songs of praise sound easily tacky and closer to newborn Christians than to honest music. We need more Al Greens, Jack Johnsons and consorts.
I do love the british. Feel very welcome here, being offered homes to stay all around the island. That feeling, to be on an island, still present. And what to say about mystic Devon, land of oaks and hedges along the rivers, the Dartmoor and its barren landscape, the beauty of its desolation, the energy of its long history, the stories in its stones, the misty mornings,…ad infinitum. Big powerful rocks everywhere, stone circles, burial grounds, a place of tangible pagan wisdom. Would like to live here for a while as a wandering minstrel, troubadour, bard,…commuting between Totnes and London. Let the A303 be my home for now. I just need to find my bag, somewhere in a van around Totnes at the moment. Everything is easy. Says the mouse running through the kitchen, just before the cat comes back from school.
I am a pisces with sagitarian rising and moon in Gemini. Astrology holds it that I should be a wandering gigolo-angel. Needless to say that I don’t identify with this description for the least - - -Happiest when sleeping out in the fields, open fields of possibilities manifold, sleeping on the hard ground, cerca da terra. Climbing on to toilet-constructions hanging in trees, waking up with a jump into an icy stream. Enjoy the taste of unpoisonned food. Come and visit sometime. Join the singing fields. There is a Community of spirit.
Loads of images piled up behind our eyes. We hope that by saying them, they will gain some intrinsic sense. But life as such has no purpose other than to be lived.
I dream of a Mongol horse-riding knight riding his horse through the night. Black, all three of them: night, horse and knight. His name is Zad Isabgol. There’s a killer on the road.

The internet connection is extremely poor,this message is very short.

2005-05-19T22:16:00.000-07:00

Namaste if you happen to read this.

I'm in Bumbelfuck-India.In a little house without electricity or water,lost in a lush green valley. With the monkeys. Until end of june.Then more news.
I'm searching for the universal can opener.

[Xanadu]

2005-03-11T22:37:00.000-08:00

[...]

In Xanadu
In Xanadu
Is where I found
My DreamComTru.

Things of Monday written on a Friday. The non-doer on the open battlefield of possibilities. A real winner doesn't engage in the war. These last few days I have witnessed the inner turmoil of 'being taken by a decision', the raging thoughts about what I could/should/would do from this point with my life. What is the most important thing to me? I didn't decide anything, it was clear and strong in the room all of a sudden, it took me two days to get my mind around it...I'm not going to Sudan in April.
I came to India with a certain purpose, to settle down in a quiet space and stay with myself for a while.When I met Robert two weeks ago and heard about Sudan, I was a little lost and confused, because the buddhist teachings didn't appeal to me at all, so the Sudan-expedition was an immediate remedy of escaping from this unrest. I wanted to 'do'. But what I realised in these last few days of cogitating and wheighing the one against the other, is that I want to find this place of real Me from where action can come with a different quality. All I really, deeply want to do, is to realise myself, and now is the time, place and perfect setting to do so, to give maximum time and energy to looking where we never look: inside. So I'm staying in India for now. Robert has no problem with this and will always need me on a later point. It was hard for me to let go of this African plan, it was like a newborn baby and I was so enthusiastic...But I cannot delay my serious endeavour to grow roots into the Ground of Being. The creator has a master plan and I have a meeting with her. I have a meeting with myself.

So thanks for all your comments, helpful links and appreciation for Sudan/Uganda, but it will not happen...for now! Smile...

...damn, it's hard to be absolutely totally unabashingly free!

keep rockin' everybody,
see you all out there!

Subkutch Milega means Kulu Mumkin!

2005-03-01T22:07:00.000-08:00

$
$

There are the many many birds in the sky - crows and buzzards mostly, hundreds of them - then there are smaller ones, beautiffully coloured, with long, artistically shaped feathers - and finally the majestic eagles, white and brown ones, and the vaultours, gliding through the air above, silently - There are the impressive mountains looking down on us, they look like giant waves, frozen since times immemorial, but still they could break down on us anytime - two earthquakes in the middle of the night, the landscape wants to get moving, immobility is just a misleading impression - India has detached itself from the african continent millenaries ago, drifted for ages through the ocean and eventually crashed into Asia, thereby forming the Himmalayas - and this process continues, we can feel the earth travelling as we travel the Earth - the little village seems to have slided down the slope and have stopped somewhere in the valley of the wave - at night its lights seem to be hanging in the air, daytime reveals the many terrasses that were shaped into the mountain, where pretty yellow flowers now announce spring - it's a green and yellow wave - mountains seemed to be the symbol for steadiness and solidity, but they're not - everything is on the move, immobility is a lure - up here, God is a process called change/
Nights in my little humid room, fully dressed with my hat on and three big blankets - evenings with two candles as companions, new peace with the past - one night shared with a puppy, a little dirty black dog met in the streets - we cuddled and later that night he pissed on the second bed in the room, I woke up as he was puking on the floor, probably too much happiness and luxury for him to cope with - Got the flu and bought a Cashmiri poncho, bringing it to six layers I'm wearing now - with this bright orange poncho and all of my things underneath, I look like a big strawberry - nice opportunity to test tibetan medicine, where you get brown little balls that you have to chew and swallow three times a day, horrible taste - sometimes, Manic Depression comes to mind and I fall into timeless stupor, mumbling about "You make love You break love it's...all the same!" - dreamlike sequences of sixty tibetan women standing in a circle holding eachother by the shoulders, singing the most marvellous melodies in their high pitched voices while a man with a huge drum stands in the middle and gives the tempo - he's standing next to a table filled with booze, mostly indian whiskey, where all the men rush to after each song. The full moon is up above our heads, and I hear music and love, but I stand as the observing outsider - Beggars and leppers and orphans in the streets, holding their hands out to monks and Westerners alike - we pass them in shame while we enter the shop where we buy mandalas, bells and other symbols for our little altar at home, or stuck up our buddhist library - cutting through spiritual materialism is very much needed: abandonning form and ritual and the community of reassuring symbols - every single moment holds liberation - we will find freedom everywhere and in everything or not at all - so let's maybe go for some material spirituality, let's go out in the material world and see what we can do for others - George Harrisson's spirit is very present with me these days - Had this quite buddhist dream the other night: I was with a bunch of people, all drunk and with our mopeds, making fun with the girls and being crazy...until one girl fell with her moped into a fence. People hurried over to help her. I could see from a distance that it was really bad, her right foot was twisted in a completely unatural position. I went over with very egoistic feelings like " I don't know this girl and she doesn't interest me, now she's spoiling all the fun and we'll have to deal with all her pain and moaning around..." But as I arrived at her moped, it wasn't this unknown girl anymore, it was one of my closest friends, he lay there with his eyes closed and it was lookinkg bad for him, I cried out and held his head, while a first aid guy proceeded, for some obscure reason, to cut open his belly with a pair of little scissors. When he started to cut with his scissors, I realised with horror that it was MY belly that starting to get cut open! I had been standing aside as an observer, but I hadn't realised that I had been hurt by the fall of the unknown girl. - There's only one of us - If I want to help myself, I've got to start searching outside of myself, introspective phase wants to get balanced by compassionate service - The Dalai Lama is a wonderfull being, irradiating just this...boddhicita! - I got interviewed by the BBC for a documentary they want to show on his 70th Birthday, on July 6th. I was asked if I found that the ordeal of the Tibetan people, the Chinese killings and occupation, exile, etc was tragic, and I answered 'no" - Met all these wonderful people here, just as I had planned to - Sebastien the french photographer, his black and white portraits of Tchetchnian refugees in Ingutshia, of Ituri people in Congo - his determination to witness and raise awareness - You are what you do - where buddhism and existentialism meet - Sergi the healthy cook from Barcelona - Jasmine from Amsterdam, making documentaries of humanitarian interest, her first one in Albania - Lila from a canadian indian tribe who's realised the dream and his a professional folk singer, taking some time off in India to find inspiration and not get caught up in money busines too much - Kirin from North Israel who wants to be a yoga teacher, but a good one, even if this will take ten years from now- in contrast, the tibetan monks I met that did speak a little english were big boys all excited about playing holiness - I've heard about monks who had to be asked to leave the guesthouse because they were shitting all over the place, others that left without paying, one who even got violent with the landlady - then there are the Western monks, very funny to observe in their red robes and serious behaviour. They know everything about tibetan buddhism, probably better than the Tibetans themselves, they actually stick to the monastic vow of not eating after noon, while the Tibetan monks eat out in happy crews till late at night, eating meat with that - Then, of course, there are your regular Western "travellers", who grape together in the pocher cafes of the place, are all about shanti shanti and smoking pot and fill the internet cafes. I guess I am not very different from then - God I'm so tired of this whole scene!
This is where divine intervention occurs - or call it karmic encounter - anyway, I came up here to meet Robert and Adrie, a couple of Anthropology and compared Religion professors from Vermont, in their early fourties, with their two amazing kids aged two and five, and the mother in law as babysitter. I met them through Collin, on a sunny terasse. Collin is my age and studying compared religion in Leuven, he learned flemish, which I find the most exotic thing an American could possibly do - Robert, very briefly stated, is one of the most impressive persons I've met so far, the kind of guy who just has it all: after having turned down a career as professional golfer at a very early age, he studied religions in Yale, music in Oxford, travelled around, experiemented with yoga-meditation-buddhism etc, lived for one year in Calcutta where he worked for Mother Theresa, didn't have a proper job until he was thirty, which is when he married, bought some appartment on 41st street in NY, renovated it and sold it for a crazy amount of money, with which he acquired further real estate, and now all his houses produce enough money for him not to worry too much about it... One of his many activities is with refugees in the States, he met these Sudanese guys and eventually flew over to Kampala, Uganda, into the refugee-camps, to see how he could help there. He found a Sudanese partner and together they bought five trucks, the idea being to provide infrastructure to the many NGO's working in Sudan, and parralelly to build up a business in tires, and on a later point anything that could be helpfully imported into Sudan, from mobile phones to range rovers to water drilling infrastructure. But he can't be down there because he has a family, so he wants to coordinate and provide capital, but he needs people to be on the ground. Collin was on the plan already, and it didn't take me more than one discussion and my unfailable (inch'Allah!) sense of first impression, to jump on the project! We talked for the next following evenings, and things took shape. Refugees, that's my field, and it so seems that I love Africa and Africa loves me - so I'll follow the call - it is "purpose", doing something I know to be good, with a real human being and not some crooked money-making enterprise, or even a big formalised and hierarchical humanitarian organisation - we're going to do business, with and for the Sudanese - We arranged that I'll meet him in Kampala on the 23rd of May, but I'll go down early April to find my marks and - more importantly - go with the five trucks on their regular trecks into Southern Sudan, for a month or so...Then, at some point, we'll see what it is I'm going to do there - Sudan just emerged this year out of the bloodiest civil war, 20 years of ungoing horror while the world was looking somewhere else - Now the UNHCR started repatriation programs, and the refugge-camps in all the neighbouring countries are planned to close down in two years time. -
So I'll be in Kampala soon, staying there for an undetermined period of time, doing a so far undetermined job, and I'm very determined to go, because I believe in true human encounters.
Subkutch Milega is Hindi
Kulu Mumkin is Arabic
they both mean
EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE

and the sky is the limit!

ADDENDUM:

One thing the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" has to say on the subject of parallel universes is that you don't stand the remotest chance of understanding it. You can therefore say "what?" and "eh?" and even go cross-eyed and start to blither if you like without any fear of making a fool of yourself.
The first thing to realize about parallel universes, the Guide says, is that they are not parallel.
It is also important to realize that they are not, strictly speaking, universes either, but it is easiest if you try and realize that a little later, after you've realized that everything you've realized up to that moment is not true.
The reason they are not universes is that any given universe is not actually a thing as such, but it is just a way of looking at what is technically known as the WSOGMM, or Whole Sort of General Mish Mash. The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash doesn't actually exist either, but is just the sum total of all the different ways there would be of looking at it if it did.
The reason they are not parallel is the same reason that the sea is not parallel. It doesn't mean anything. You can slice the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash any way you like and you will generally come up with something that someone will call home. Please fell free to blither now.

Tashi Delek on a snowy morning

2005-02-21T02:57:00.000-08:00

*
*
After 12H of bus ride from Dehli, with a middle of the night stop in Pundjab ( 20 Sikhs eating in silence on a long table 30 cm high), we arrived in Dharamsala at five in the morning, it was snowing! I had bought a woolen blanket, but the wind was blowing hard, we had to wait outside, to get the bags down the roof and find taxis. Anja from Russia, manifestly confused by everything, was now addressing me exclusively in plain russian, and I kept telling her that everything was fine, "kharasho", because that's the only word I could remember from Thom's first ruski-babblings.After a short drive, we were dropped and told the cars couldn't get higher up because of the snow, it is very exceptional for this place to have snow. So we hiked our way up to the village, a pit-stop at Cafe-Tibet to have a warm Chai (...) and life was winning again! It was just beautiful to discover these impressive mountains, the little villages scattered on the flanks. On the mountain side just accross the river, a stone avalanche came down with a furious rumbling, resonating mightily throughout the valley, and giant birds were drawing their circles above our heads, breathtaking, also because the walk was long and steep, the monks making pauses on the sidewalk, I was walking lightly and blessing my small bagpack.
Macleod Ganj is the name of this village where the teachings find place. Of course everything is full, no rooms, an atmosphere of Joseph and Maria ending up in the street...I got lucky, met a french guy who just started a little GH with his indian wife, they gave me a room which originally they didn't intend to rent. It has a perfect view on the mountain and valley below, that's for sure. But it's a little damp, and the colour is coming down from the ceiling, little pink dots on the bed each morning, but I have 5 blankets, and this view, and I pay 100 rupees, so...
So I sat a little bit with this nice and adventurous couple (they took their two kids along to spend six months up here), trying to warm up, putting my feet into the coals until my trousers were almost burning. The morning was spent running from shop to shop trying to find something warm, which just everybody was desperately trying to do. So I bought big socks, a woolen Zipfelmuetze and a big big wooly jumper ( that's how they call sweaters in England). I got this word from Melanie, London-city disillusioned TV-broadcaster, who wants to establish herself in Cornwall with massage and Reiki..After having a meal together, we decided to do some massage and Reiki at her place, crossing the village's frozen streets, where by now huge snowball battles were going on, everybody was standing around, waiting to throw a snowball at you. It was hillarious to see all these monks, with their light robe and one arm free, playing around in the snow and forgetting about non-violence for the time of a game.
I was very happy to practise some massage, and got an excellent indian head massage, then we did some pranayamas (breath exercises), meditaded a bit but got soon too freezy, so we cuddled under the blankets, shared some heat, and next thing we knew it was One in the morning...So I escaped from my room for this first night.
After this good and long night, Mel and me walked around the area, taking strolls to the neighbouring villages, their Tibetan and Indian habitants, meeting Rajhastanis on their honey moon, Shiva temples with barefoot sadhus in the snow, some guys taking a swim in a little pool, the snow was melting today, big bright sun, crazy indian drivers almost killing us, smoking their tiny cigarettes, drinking many Chais, seeing cows run freely and holy, smiling monks everywhere, monkeys jumping in the trees, tearing old prayer flags into pieces, yes, today I had the feeling I've landed in India, socks and shoes are soaking wet and no way they can dry up, everybody is smiling and happy to be here, 500 foreigners have arrived already, at the registration for the teachings I was told that they expect the double, and about five or ten thousand monks...
Namaste and Tashi Delek from this buzzing hive, next news soon!

Here and there and everywhere else just as well

2005-02-19T01:01:00.000-08:00

.
.
I had slept only about three hours the night before leaving, so when I entered the plane, trying hard to keep my eyes open, it felt like I was already dreaming when somebody called me, and there were Paris and Rome. Parris and Roane, by their real names, are two girls from South Carolina who sat in the Reiki initiation with me and initially got me into this Dharamsala-plan. I greeted them, but had to move on, stumbled on to my seat, and woke up some four or five hours later, arriving in Delhi in the early morning. The girls took me along to the Tibetan settlement in Delhi, to spend the night and take the bus from there. So that's where I'm now, Majnu Ka Tili, a bubble of peace in this crazy city.
If Dharamsala is the little Tibet in North India, then Majnu Ka Tili is probably little Dharamsala in Delhi, and it has striking ressemblances with Lhasa. The whole area is covered with prayer flags on the roofs, the tiny streets are packed with monks in their dark red robes, sitting and drinking tea or playing a board game that looks like biliard for fingers. There is no place for cars, only Indian merchants displaying fruits on their carriages, their dark faces sticking out in a sea of tibetan faces. Dalai Lama by the way means "sea of wisdom" (actually "ocean"), and we know him as this eternally smiling guy, but here, coming from Thailand (the land of smile), I found people reserved, not caring too much for the few Westerners that came here. For these are refugees, and here just as everyhere, this is a sad job, a lot of just sitting around, jobs hard to find, memories of lost Tibet written on the faces of the old while the youngsters, Hindi speaking and urbanised, either prepare the return to modern Tibet through the "Tibetan Youth Congress", a political body detached from the religious action of H.H., or think of a better life, possibly in the USA, Canada or Belgium.
All the hotels are packed, people came from all over the country, and the word here is "see you in Dharamsala", as everybody who has the opportunity of course will go up to listen to His Holiness speak for two weeks. In front of the small temple where the monks were chanting, I met Rosemary from the UK with her camera team: 6 years of filming for this particular project, 20 years of love for the Tibetans, although we didn't get into any political details, she suddenly had tears in her eyes. "See you up there!" Then there is Anja from Russia, with her two antiquated wordbooks, her immense russian jacket. She is Mongolian-looking, buddhist, originating from Kalmykia, an obscure Caucasus-republic near Daghestan. We communicated in german, she had studied philosophy ( fanciing Western post-modernism and constructivism) and is now busy with cultural studies in Moscow, and Buddhism of course. She gave me the number of her friend in Dharamsala, Russian connection! "See you up there!"
I did some shopping, buying long trousers, RED trousers, actually, and know I feel very uncomfortable, like with an arkward haircut...which I've had in Korat, shaving my head tibetan style. A warm blanket, a mug for the tea, and ready we are, pilgrims of the New Age, to listen to a 2500 years old message.
I am determined to set aside my conditioned ideas and expectations,
to make myself empty for a moment.
To be open.
To receive.

Boogie Woogie in Nakhon Ratchasima

2005-02-17T21:34:00.000-08:00

Eccletism is the name of the game;I would best describe myself as a funky monk, emphasis on funky and monk, somebody who comes out of a transcendental Reiki experience to rush without any transition into a somewhat wilder dance, to live some other part of me, and some other part of Thailand! Luke "Paiwalker" Bolzenberg joined me in Nong Khay, fleeing as he was from a way too intensive girl-story in Laos just across the river. We decided to take a 6H train ride down to Korat (nickname for Nakhon Ratchasima), big city in this very authentic Issan province. As I mentionned before, there is nothing to see here, and that's why there are no tourists at all, so that we had the town for ourselves, dancing our way through the packed markets and boiling streets. Luke (Som by his Thai name) is one of those few Thai lovers who really share the day to day life of thai people, speaking enough to have discussions, and dancing around and playing the fool when words are not enough. Of course, the guy loves Thais because he had some Thai lovers, which is the royal way to discover a country, a culture (and probably especially Thailand). When a woman opens her arms and her bed for you, she opens the country to you in a palpable way, transmogrifies it from an object of observation to a subject of true interaction. And Som, as a matter of fact, had been studying the country through and through for six consecutive years...So discovering the place with him was quite a different story. It began with food, which morphed into "adventure food" or "extreme fooding": from fried grasshoppers,silkworms, and other delicatessen to every imaginable kind of soup, he knew everything, so it seemed to me, but he kept saying that this was such a crazy place that you could actually spend six years without eating the same. He kept looking for dog, which he wanted to try, but fortunately, that wasn't on any menu. Extreme Thailanding, other than exploring foods (Thais eat all the time), implies going to the market and just looking at the food,which of course invariably gets you into lenghty discussions with the sellers, and once they find out that the longnoses do speak Thai,they gather in big groups, shout jokes at us, Som jokes back, makes some ridiculous dance movements just to make everyone happy, the girls giggle openly when in groups and more shyly when alone...
A guy whom we talked with for several minutes offered to rent us his second motorbike for 60 baths a day (little more than 1 Euro), we managed to bargain UP to 100 baths, his nickname was Rabbit. Other common nicknames are: pig (for fatties), Rat, bird, Star, Cat, Dog, Cow, etc...So in the early evening, we hang out with Rabbit and his wife,Bird (beautiful Nok), drank whiskey with soda and ate green pappaya and all this in front of the seven-seven (easier to remember than seven-eleven), feeling very groovy, feeling very Thai, admiring how naturally the neighbour will take over customers atyour shop if you're away, and then all this love and affection for the kids, which is in Thailand as nowhere else, the center of life; playing with kids, making them laugh, making them feel welcome!
Som had some strong opinions about things you HAVE to see in Thailand, and some were missing on my list. So in our five days of Hoozie Woosie, we checked quite a lot of karaoke places (kalaokay), sang the worst english songs and some really nice Thai ones, bought the bottle of whiskey with the girls coming as a package, sang and danced with them, let them fill our glasses and giving us little massages from the side, paid for them afterwards, said thank you for the service and went to have another late night soup. We entered a real whorehouse too, called "the world of entertainment", sat down at a table, had a glass of water and observed about 40 men just hanging around, having drinks and watching football on giant screen, while about 15 women were sitting in front, behind a window, with numbers on, likewise watching TV, and every few minutes, a guy would order a girl, she gets called out, and they leave for the room upstairs. Some of the girls were quite old already, none of them was pretty, quite gloomy story, so we went for a yentafo-soup...
This city, at this particular time of year, seems to be the hottest spot around, and afternoons between one and six were almost unbearable outside,a little better under the ventilator, so it was siesta time...but since I had very concrete plans, I ran to a travel agency and found a convenient flight for the very next day. So it was time to say goodbye, but as Luke said, in life you always meet twice, and he went down South while I headed for Bangkok where I arrived in the big heat, crossed the city on a motorcy-taxi,got back to the guesthouse of my first day here, had one last massage by sweet Ni, discovered now that she was working here with her sister and mother, who was half chinese and teethless,lying 10 cm beside me while her daughter was busy with my feet, grabbing my arm and telling me that I was very handsome...nice family! It was pleasing to notice by the nature of my interactions with the staff in the guesthouse that I had grown into a more Thai-integrated personality, not the usual farang who just talks to you when complaining about something or asking any service...
I took a cab at ten, hung out at the airport for hours on end, and in the middle of the night, I took off the ground of Siam for my next destination: Mama India!
But that's another story...

Reiki love

2005-02-14T09:48:00.000-08:00

***
***

In life there is only one duty,
And that is the duty of happiness.
This is the reason of our being here,
But all of our duties,
Moral codes
And regulations
Do not make us happy,
And so we seldom make each other happy.
If man is to be good
He can only be so
When he is happy,
When he carries harmony within,
In other words, when he loves.
This is the teaching,
The only teaching in the world;
The one taught by Jesus Christ,
The one taught by Buddha,
And taught by Hegel, too.
For each one of us, the most important thing in the world
Is his inmost being,
His soul, his ability to love.
If this is in good order,
You can eat cake or crusts,
Wear jewels or rags,
And the world will ring in purity with the soul,
Will be good,
Will be in good order.

____________________________________

I oh I. Me and Me. Mine or Mine. The inward journey can be a hard one sometimes. I came to tell you about Reiki, but there's not much I can say, because it is just like with love when it's good and strong: words cannot convey, this oceanic feeling is to be experienced, words just break the magic. So I leave it to Herman Hesse to sing us his song of determined happiness. Happiness, like everything else, is a decision. Now this is where I'm starting to bore you, and even myself, got to live those things, come home to the silence afterwards.
Reiki is all about creating a nurturing space, a welcoming silence, where things pleasant and unpleasant may come up. A soothing dream or a healing crisis, it is always an expression of our state at this moment. Nobody does anything, really. A person giving Reiki is just there to lead universal energy to another person. A channel, nothing more. When I first received Reiki from Beatrix, it felt like the energy was talking to me: I started to get all these positive thoughts saying that I didn't need to strive for health, that I was healthy already; later it was telling me that I should love myself....felt rocked like a child, learning to be gentle with myself.... A lot of yet unidentified fear also came up, running like a cold shiver over my whole body, and then rest and confidence again. A trip, an inward journey, the place I really came to look for, here and now in Asia. The initiation itself is a process of four days, during which the Master opens your highest chacra to this kind of energy and seals it into your hands. After that, you have Reiki hands, heat that wasn't there before. "Mache mich zum Werkzeug deines Friedens".
I learned to pray again. During those magic moments of intiation, I felt a "white" peace flowing through me, I experienced it, and the following extract from Henry Miller - written just after the start of WW II - will hopefully resonate in each one of you, as a promise of increased life joy, just as it did for me. Love to everyone, let the Master speak.

***
***

The joy of life comes through peace, which is not static but dynamic. No man can really say that he knows what joy is until he has experienced peace. And without joy there is no life, even if you have a dozen cars, six butlers, a castle, a private chapel and a bomb-proof vault. Our diseases are our attachments, be they habits, ideologies, ideals, principles, possessions, phobias, gods, cults, religions, what you please. Good wages can be a disease just as much as bad wages. Leisure can be just as great a disease as work. Whatever we cling to, even if it be hope or faith, can be the disease which carries us off. Surrender is absolute: if you cling to even the tiniest crumb you nurrish the germ which will devour you. As for clinging to God, God long ago abandonned us in order that we might realize the joy of attaining godhood through our own efforts. (...)
That which stands will have to fall. Everything which man fought for will have to be relinquished before he can begin to live as man. Up till now he has been a sick beast and even his divinity stinks. He is master of many worlds and in his own he is a slave. What rules the world is the heart, not the brain. In every realm our conquests bring only death. We have turned our backs on the one realm wherein freedom lies. At Epidaurus, in the stillness, in the great peace that came over me, I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world!

Wwoofing in deep Issan province

2005-02-07T01:44:00.000-08:00

After my yoga class had ended and everybody had left, I spent three more days on the Riverside, pretty much all by myself. I treated myself to a 4-days Reiki magical mistery tour with Beatrix, who would initiate me two weeks later in this ancient japanese art of healing.
Motorcycling memories:
Probably the most hilarious of my cycling events here in Thailand happened during those days, when I found myself sitting on a moped, at the back, with three (!) giggling thai girls who took me to Om Mani beach, a 'beach' by the Mekong, right under the Friendship bridge to Laos.
Another nice cycling 'prouesse' was in Pai, when I drove two girls all the long way to the hot springs and furhter. Coming back in the dark, we could see straight lines of burning forest up the mountain; in the dry season, they burn (roden) everything over here, so you have these beautiful streets of fire climbing towards the mountain top.
The last memory is the first in chronological order, when Luke had lend me his Honda dream for a day and I went up the winding road to the Lodge cave, overseeing green valleys and thick forest, a breathtaking scenery, as they say in the guides, but which was absolutely true, especially because I was driving so fast...The cave was gigantic, I was guided along with a petrol lamp, seeing shapes of crocodiles and dragons, before I got on a bamboo raft on the the stream which crossed the cave. In the dark silence, with just the sound of a bamboo stick in the water to push the raft, I imagined crossing the Styx and arriving in the land of the Dead, I got lost in deep reverie, and when I came out almost two hours later, I had the distinctive feeling of not being the same as before...

As I came out of my fourth and last Reiki session, I bumped into a little note at the guesthouse restaurant, calling for volunteers at a WWOOF farm.
Wwoof, as you all know, stands for 'Willing workers on organic farms', an organisation based on the system of work for a free accomodation. I had had a first experience with it in Chiapas, Mexico, which had been a fiasco, just as this whole trip was aborted a little later. Now that everything's different, I packed my things the next morning and headed to the farm. I had called there and I knew I was to be the only worker there for the moment, I didn't care too much. But who was it that said, travelling could be lonely? It's almost impossible to stay alone for a longer period...So there I was happily sitting on my bus, when this rasta-hippie girl came on, sat down next to me (after I had invited her to do so) and told me she was going to this other Wwoof place, where she had been staying before, and before long, I decided to go to this place, 6 hours away, instead of my nice planned 2 hours ride. It got really reaaly hot on the bus, and my ears, completely stuffed, began to hurt in a most unpleasant way. So Telsche ( her real name) gave me Reiki on the ears, much to the amusement of the other passangers. Then she did some reading of her book for me - on which I will come back later - and I could cosily collapse in my seat while listening to the story.
Busride memory: in this category, the all time favourite is from last summer, Stockholm-Oslo, 12 Hours beside a wildly gorgeous ethiopian dancer girl. She talked about her country, we listened together to ethiopian music on shared headphones, I 'had' to help her undo her false dreads, and in the middle of the night, she began to eat the national speciality, I forgot the name, a red spicy paste which you eat with soft, moist bread. She explained that, in the traditional way, she had to feed me for the first bite, and then I had to do the same for her...we were talking a mix of norsk-svenska-english, she eventually fell asleep on my shoulder. At the Oslo terminal, we said goodbye and I hopped on the Bergen Bahn, crossing the country to meet Kari-La.
Some 6 hours later, we arrived in the burning heat of Issan province, in the North East of Thailand. The part that the gods forgot with the touristic manna, there is nothing to see here, which is exactly why I resolutely wanted to come to this area. Telsche, who has a boy friend at home, has another boyfriend here, Vittaya. Vittaya came to pick us up with his pick-up ( a pick up pick-up, or something...) and I jumped in the bag.
Pick-up memories:
In mexico, after Jean Pouppart had sold one of the two cars we were travelling with, there was not enough place inside, so I spent one day sitting on bagpacks, with the wind in my hair, playing guitar and waving royally to the other cars.
In Egypt, coming back from Ras Abou Galoum with Pepa, crossing red coloured canyons and quite secretive UN military bases. This spot on the Red Sea was at the end of the world, you had to walk several hours to get there. And when we arrived, tired and happy, the beduins' first question had been: opium, coke, heroine?
And so this was another one of these rides on the back of a pick-up, one hour ride in the sunset, through a national park ( I am quite positive that I saw...a wolf! but I have to check on that), one of these moments were you sing along with the wind, and it's the sound of the soundtrack of your life.

We arrived in the dark at Ban Sarryong, a project run by an ancient monk and his wife, now living in divorce, but still living together for the time being, for the two kids and the project. They are building mudhouses, a lot of clay everywhere over here, and they organise workshops to introduce this technique in Thailand. It's meant to get poor people out of Bangkok, and build a house out of clay. Total cost: 100 USD. So I spent a short week there, plastering roof and walls, mixing 'Reishuelsen' with clay and water, standing in the hole, kneedeep, good experience! It got a little more physical when we had to shovel for hours. With an aching back, I was giving massage to others - not only as a receiver, but also as a provider -
and falling into my bed at night, thick sleep without dreams. During the long breaks in the afternoon heat, Telsche and me continued the loud reading of her book, "Die Vertreibung aus der Hoelle" by Robert Menasse, austrian writer, painting the portrait of Baruch Spinoza's teacher in Amsterdam, Rabbi Samuel Ben Israel, who had to flee from the Inquisition in 16th Century Portugal. First time I read anything about this period, and the horror, so vividly described, was even more present to me because of some recent dreams:
While in Sinai last year - first time to hear hebrew, to meet Jews - I had a dream about an old man in Nazi Berlin, running through the city, affraid of getting into a control because no papers. A little girl was with him. I remember writing down this dream and adding, for some reason, "I am this old man!"
Here in Thailand, another dream, where I had this very clear vision of an old man with a white beard, managing to escape from a train to Ausschwitz and running through Berlin, oddly enough in a smoking. A drunken soldier stopped him (me) and asked for identification papers, and he said his name, which I couldn't remember later, but I knew that it came as a shock, some old fear coming out...
Now the possibility of a previous life as a nazi victim seems quite plausible to me: I have always been panic struck at controls on public transport etc..even when I was completely in order; I was fascinated by the people I met in Ras Shitan, and the sound of Hebrew; at my birth, my mother, out of the blue, wanted to call me David, which became my second name...when we crossed the Israeli border with Thomas, the attractive female officer, after a host of questions about identity etc looked at me and asked "Are you Jewish?" I had a moment of hesitation...but preferred to say no. Had she known that I was even circumcised...

Another memory came up, from this life this time, when Kath was raving about her beautiful first memories with water and swimming. I suddenly remembered how I learned to swim. It was before I entered school. This guy, Willy Kueck, big moustache, was to teach me in the local covered swimming pool, harsh smell of Chlor, people running and screaming everywhere, dreaded cold shower befor entering...I was standing there, with my white and blue Schwimmuetze, on the steps to the pool, somewhere between shallow and deep water. The man said 'jump', and when I asked, scared, if my feet would touch here, he said 'yes', I trusted him, jumped..and drowned. He had to catch me out,...
That's it. Just a memory coming to the surface. Another piece in the puzzle of many deep, unconscious fears that linger underneath.

With Francois from Quebec, we joined Ooi and Beng ( the divorced wife of the monk, 26 and a great little lady) as they went to get coconuts. Just like in my phantasies about savages on a white beach, Ooi climbed without rope a 30 meter tree, in maybe 30 sec, sat down on the branches up there, took out his machete and cut some twenty nuts, then opened one up there and drank slowly, throwing us more nuts and a big smile.
Met Lung-Bob, old chap from California, 78 years old and a face like Robert Lax the poet, moving like a cat, doing yoga of course, telling me about his years of hitchiking through the states and Mexico in the sixties...Being old over here is the exact opposite of what it is in the West. Here it's respect and some little housholding tasks, the old women sitting in front of the houses, picking leaves or pealing vegetables. Nothing to do with the Pepsi world where young is beautiful, and old is unacceptably not sexy.

The last evening was memorable: a group of three farang workers and six thais gathered in the mud house we had been finishing, with some biscuits, beer and whiskey, guitar and drums, and it was another one of these nights where I have the ability to really rock the party...The ingredients therefore are a good bunch of people, nice surrounding, and one special person, usually female, with a good voice, who likes to improvise, play with second voice etc...then it really takes off! At one point, I went out to pee, and I looked back, in the dark, on this African-looking round mudhouse under the stars and the surrounding silence, candles in the middle, dogs running in and out, people laughing, singing, playing games...Jamie from the US (that night's special person) had her birthday, it was some good piece of party, till two.
I got up next morning at six, in a purple light through the bamboo trees, felt so happy about my light head (drinking only water) and said goodbye to my clay hut, was brought to the bus station in the village and drove off into the sunrise.

Some hours later, back in Nong Khai, I'm ready for tomorrow's start of the Reiki initiation. And that is that.

Yoga in Nong Khay by the Mekong

2005-01-26T20:07:00.000-08:00

Yes yes, it's all a big mistake to think of someone who moves as someone who journeys. It's all wrong; maybe the only noteworthy steps are those taken inwardly in our "silent hour" and yet, one feels compelled to move again and again. "...And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time". (T.S. Elliot) The exterior world is so unspectacular. What would you say, if you had to define yourself in one sentence? How would you choose to die? A) Eaten up by a lion B) In front of the execution squad C) In somebody else's bed?And more, which would be your grandiolesque last message to the world, according to the situation you chose?
I am sitting in Nong Khay, with angels in my brain, coming out of intensive yoga retreat. What can I say? Pancho is 48 and Beatrix from Sudtirol. Together, they have been practising and teaching for 20 years or so. They are very simply redefining the meaning of yoga. "Yogic science", actually, which is an all encompassing, highly complex cosmology, and so much more than these glorified postures we use to think of, when we talk of yoga. Here, Yoga is taken back to the original meaning of the word, which is "union" or "connection". Union between the self and the universe. ( I warmly recommend "Communion with God" by Neale Donald Walsh). The basic idea, very briefly, is the following:
ancient Indian philosophy holds ( and modern science, with the evolution of quantum physics, now accepts), that everything in the universe is vibration, that - ultimately - there is no solid materia. The smallest solid particle, the atom, has been discovered to be divisible and made up of ...vibrations. If everything is vibration, so are we. And there are five different kinds of vibrations which make us up, some of lower and some of higher frequency:
- the lowest frequencies make up the physical body, there is an impression of solidity
- on a higher frequency, we have what is called the spiritual body, or aura.
- finally, we have a menthal body, extremely high frequencies, there are actually three sub-parts in here, one that is in contact with the lower bodies, instinctive reflexes etc..., one that is our rational, intellectual mind, and one that is open to the frequencies of the universe.

All of these different sorts of waves are supposed to be in vibrant harmony. But unfortenately, we have this propensity for vibrational disharmony. Just like a violin, we tend to loose our fine tuning within ourselves and, as a consequence, in relation to the entire orchestra. This, is the cause of ALL our problems. Yoga, then, was put forward as a cure to reinstall this pristine harmony, to re-align us within ourselves and with life, God, the universe....For this, Yoga aims to work from every angle: by working on our body, we improve our mind; by meditating, we get rid of chronic physical ailments; by working on our breath, we strive for the union of body and soul. Achievement of this long path is called enlightenment, it's coming back to this place where we started, and to know it for the first time. Yoga, of course, is not the only way, and maybe it shouldn't be considered as a way at all, but rather as a tool, a discipline, along the way. The only way to get anywhere is an authentic life.
And yoga is great yo find out who you really are. And the physical part is but one out of eight points, known as Patanjali's eightfold path. It's all about grace, beauty. It's all a meditation in its own right, and flexibility is just a byproduct of it. It feels like a good place to be in. Sleep is difficult to find and short. Meditation activates more parts of the brain than all of our intellectual work, and some of them we otherwise never use. I wake up around five, with the sound of the gong from the Wat nearby. God, I love this feeling of getting up and into the night by this serene and promising call. Taking a (cold) shower then is a happening, and I feel so very alive. This is my idea of party. Party-yoga! The meditation in the morning is the best, 5 to 7 is the time of highest activity of the large intestine according to chinese medecine, and that's metal element, standing for clarity, understanding, but also grief and letting go...I'll have to work a lot on that one...
Felt elated after getting hold of two Henry Miller books, had just finished short stories by J.D. Salinger. I really love America, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me... a part of me was born in the streets of Brooklyn! Looking forward to discover Greece with Miller, with thoughts for Adi, my very own private Katzimbalis, who read a few hilarious pages of Miller to me and Susi in these days of cautious celebration in Heidelberg, after my father's succesful operation last summer. In the meantime, I'm having interstellar travellings with Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi", read the story of Buddha and discover that in Buddhism, despite the belief in reincarnation, there is no "Self"...so what is being reincarnated from life to life? A lot of blurry spots, dead alleys and even dogmatism in this seemingly so sympathetic religion. A lot of words, too. The meditator fuelled a lot of intellectual masturbation. But when the monks are chanting with their deep voices in the early morning, it's all fine with me. The Mekong still sleeps and a gang of dogs is one the way for a jogging on the promenade and the first meal. May all beans be happy. "...in the early stages of practice, distraction is interrupted by occasional moments of meditation" - the mind is a drunk little monkey.
So we trained ourselves in calming the little monkey, but during the breaks and lunches, the six master students ( what a nice paradoxon!) got together, and we talked about everything there is to talk about, and probably more...which was absolutely fantastic, and was like a workshop in the workshop. It seemed that in between so much introspection, everybody had a lot to get out, and it felt great to share this...Two fairies (or godesses with a small "g") from England were giving the main drive for this private workshop: Diana, princess of the subconscious world, whom we've met in Pai and who got us here in the first place, would close her eyes and fall into meditation in the middle of dinner, because she was communicating with her boyfriend in London...direct connection made her economise a lot on email! (viva el T-mail, telepathic mail!). She also made everybody feel terribly jealous because in deep cyclic meditation, she would easily merge with water and be only energy etc...She had her weaknesses as well, by instance she expressed the very boring whish to die in her bed after a long, happy life, and how conventional is that? The unconventional side about her was that she dreaded typical questions like "what do you do" because these questions were always answered by " I am"- answers ( a journalist, a world dictator, etc..). Then there was Kath, who was a lilly in the field and the butterfly flying among the flowers. Living in the woods in a wooden hut, she proudly stated that she indeed WAS a massage therapeutist, but the best way to define her would be by an answer she gave me to the question if she was planning to go to India: in a "queen mum goes to Woodstock" kind of way, she exclamated "Oh, I'm aaaalways going to India!" We laughed a lot and the general mood of these get-togethers was truly therapeutic to me. Big thanks to the universe for sending me all these wonderful people, opportunity to mention this dream I had before leaving Belgium, about this place of study, and my fellow students, who were at least as important as the teaching at hand...
So yes, Yoga is basically rolling around on the ground and having fun!

Information from Pai

2005-01-13T23:54:00.000-08:00

Pour faire une bonne pizza au four, il faut trois sortes de bois: du chene pour les braises, du hetre pour l'odeur et finalement du boulot au-dessus, qui va faire la petite flamme qui va chauffer le haut du four, quand celui-ci est chauffe a blanc, on sait qu'on a atteint les 240 degres necessaires. (source: Amido de Wavre)

A new planet has been discovered by the latest generation of Nasa telescopes on the outer parts of our solar system, way beyond Pluto...They called it Sedna, after some Inuit legend. It triggers speculations about the search for planet X...

If you want to have a theine-free indian Chai, instead of black tea, you can put roybush tea in there, which apparently mixes nicely with the ginger...

Speaking of ginger, it's really strong medecine for everything, among other things for the kidneys (Nieren, reins), Roos gave me hot ginger compresses. You just boil ginger and then apply it on the kidneys with towels, you can use the same ginger-water for three consecutive nights.
When your kidneys are cold, you have to massage your ears and rub them gently, it really helps.
For winter times, the Rolls-Royce of kidney-warmers are sheep or rabbit-furr belts you put on in bed, you can add a rabbit tail on there, for the sake of kinkyness.

To clear your sinuses in a spectacular way, put salty water up one nostril at a time, let the water come out through the other nostril. The salt cuts the mucus, it is even more effective when you add baking-soda to the salt. All you need for this is a tea pot or anything which you can introduce into your nose (I'm using a little plastic bottle for bike-oil). Do this morning and evening, and re-discover planet smell!

Nuts are terribly nutritious, and so is coconut milk and meat.

In order to make the best and easiest Thai dish, Pad Thai, you need:
Large thai noodles, meat or tofu or shrimps, oil, oyster sauce, soybeam sauce, been sprout, one egg, green lemon, sugar, broth, thai pepper, garlic, crushed peanut, chilli powder, spring ognions.
Start out with the garlic and the egg, then vegetables, then noodles, add a little vegetable boullion, the sauces and last the crushed peanuts.

There is nothing to know.

Yeshua (Jesus) had a daughter with Maria Magdalena, called Sar'h. Maria Magdalena was no whore at all, but an initiated in the egyptian sex cult of Isis. Jesus too, while on the dead sea, had been initiated to egyptian alchemy. More of this in "The Maria Magdalena Manuscript".

Pai is a sleepy little mountain town with a crazy charm. A lot of people noticed this, and so the number of guesthouses has risen from 14 to 140 in the last seven years. The charm is still not broken yet...Apparently there's a twin town to this place, in terms of good easy vibes, in South Ecuador, Fulcabamba.

Changing conditions create changing truths.

Roos gives me treatment for my intestines, where I have had a serious solidification for years now. It is beginning to get softer and she thinks it can be removed...For this alone, the travel here was worth its money!
After the massage, we slided into a yoga class, given by a 60 year old crazy cat from California, who goes by the name of Rama von Baringer and who hung out with Ramdass and Timothy Leary and all of 'em guys in their psychedelic days in the sixties. He is still flexible like a young man, and looks so young, behaves even younger! To him, Yoga is basically laughing and rolling around on the floor...Great fun! Classes given at nine in the morning, outside, on a mountain top, when the surrounding mountains are still covered with mist...At eleven it's getting hot, and we go all together for lunch in town, laugh some more...Rama and Roos are starting to become something like a couple, really fun to watch! I'm into sports from 5 to 7 pm, when it gets cooler. This ist also the time when the schoolband rehearses, with about fourty trompets, Thailand's still number one hit: the final countdown. They even play this song at weddings, as the entry dance (!!!). But let's come back to sports. They have a tipically Thai ballgame here called Taco, played with a little light ball, like volleyball but only with the feet, net as high as a badminton net I reckon...The guys at the school ground are amazing to watch, they can actually smash the ball down with their feet, doing a flip over karate jump like monkeys...I bought a ball and now I practice with Som - Lucas aus'm Allgaeu, aus Kempten sogar, kennt die Rapunzel-Prinzessinen, den Ritterkeller, etc...- a bavarian guy who speaks very good Thai and is member of a big percussion group called orange. He told me that one guy we've just met was actually a legend of the goa-psychedelic scene..anyone's heard of Antaro?
With Som, I started again to go out a little bit, drinking alcohool and talking bullshit all night...I felt a silent despair the morning afterwards, just want to live in my saddhana...No meat and no alcohol or other substances, nor pleasure of the flesh...Time is a change. Time for a change...within me. Have been quite unbalanced ever since I left Nelli, especially concerning the ladies...want to try out something new...just by myself...

Today we went swimming...with elephants!!! At a place where the river is deep enough, the animals just let themselves roll on the side, and the game was to try to stay on their back, falling off, crawling up again from the side when their sitting or on their trunk (Ruessel, trompe) when they're standing, they actually lift you up...big time sanouk sanouk mak mak!!!

Next move will be on the 18th to Nong Khay, for a 7 day yoga retreat on the banks of the Mekong, just in front of Vientane. N'espere pas trouver Dieu ailleurs que partout.

And now a little quiz for the ending words.

"What does one wall say to the other?"

It is actually not 11:45 at all, but I can't be bothered to change the settings.
There's no such thing as time. It's our time.
Nice one

Chapter One: A fellow student, a teacher, and three Buddhas on the roadside.

2005-01-02T04:34:00.010-08:00

Coming out of Bangkok airport and at the same time of many layers of unnecessary clothes, I immediately headed for the bus stop, hopped on number 2 bus and watched the giant city roll along with me into the sunset....:)
It was a reaaally long drive actually, and when I stepped out Kho San Road, it was dark and hungry Iwan I was. So without further hesitation, I grabbed a touk-touk (motorbike-rikshaw) which of course is the official way to celebrate arrival to this city. The driver accepted a ride for half-price if I accepted to stop ten minutes at a shop with fine silk and pretended to look for a evening dress for my girlfriend. We drove along the avenues with the giant posters of the king, and later through those little streets where people started to gather to drink, to eat, etc..A small fat white dog was standing in the middle of the street, with a blue T-shirt on. Everybody seemed to be happy, the city was so incredibly modern and wealthy-looking...Sara had given me the strong advice 'go to Thewet!', so I went to Thewet, near the flowermarket. There, I got a little lost in the maze of market streets and found myself inside the Wat (temple) area, where 30 Thai-grandmas had an aerobic-session on a diabolic music. That's when I started to feel a little exhausted, not to say sick of running around, just wanted a f... place to stay and come down! Such a place materialised in the form of the Shanti Guesthouse - couldn't have been more appropriately named - where I got a bed, a shower and ... a massage upstairs. My first thai-massage, by sweet Nii, god bless her little hands! Under her expert touch I remembered that today was christmas, so I went downstairs and had my first thai christmas meal, and again felt like blessing the whole world...After having kissed the feet of the entire kitchen crew, I take a beer with Pii, 38 old thai guy who sells T-shirts to Europe and makes a good living and takes me with his sister's car where a band plays reggae. We see the tourist area where they bang cocktails for one Euro. After his cocktail, he gets really tired and says goodbye, I head home by foot, in my new pediatric leather-sandals that hurt me like hell. I offer belgian chocolate to the employees of the guesthouse and sleep the sleep of the innocent.

Next morning sees me on a excursion through my area, the marketwomen sleeping in their vegetables, the turtles and snails of all sizes in buckets, the roasted crickets,... I take the boat to go into town. Three little monks look at me, laughing; later I found out that I was standing on the spot reserved for monks. There are many monks running around in the city. For, in this country, it is socially rewarding for a man to take the begging bowl and become monk for at least a year, usually between the end of his studies and before professional life and family. Nice custom, isn't it, dear all? I pay a visit to the huge sleeping Buddha at Wat Po, where I also have an excellent foot massage and a slightly laxative herbal drink. Meet some people from the plane who invite me to Delhi. Then I do some purposeless wandering around, in the smelly streets somewhere in town, I have no clue where I am, but I know I want to get out as soon as possible. So with my nice gasoline intoxication I go back guesthouse and have food and feel a little alone. In the dormitory where I sleep, someone as left a guitar. It is a really good instrument, and for an hour or so, I play my blues away ( or rather, magnify my blues) until someone stands in the door....and it's Szimon and Nathalie from Belgium, to whom I had written my adress earlier today. Quite a surprise to see familiar faces here! We have a beer and greatly scientific discussions about this remarkable syncretism of western liberalism and oriental flavour that prevails in Thailand. Thailand means the land of the free, and it has never been colonialised, add to this the buddhistic spice, it's a very sympathetic and carefree people, these Thais. I have not run into the prostitution business, which seems to be confined to a special area, and girls are very reserved. Good for them. I have another massage from Nii, this is about as much intimacy I need right now. Along with the honeymoon couple and some Australians, we stroll around until three, when all the transexuals run around, laughing, with coloured balloons in their hands. The food shops in the street are full at this time of night, I have an excellent Pa Thai ( nooddles and egg and vegies) and an equally good night.

Sunday morning was busy with getting everything ready for my indian Visa (photos etc). I meet "Go", a worldwide traveller from Bilbao with an authentic rajasthani moustache. He's been taking massage classes in Pai, North from Chiang Mai, and gives me tips for best teachers. Yes, forgot to mention that my secret information about this "little village in the North" was by no means secret, Thailand is a touristic place, and Pai is called the Ko Pan Ngang of the North. This guy, Go, flew to Chennay the next day, day of the catastrophe...
At five o'clock, bus to Chang Mai waits in front of the guesthouse. The Australians are also on board ( Alex sings Jeff like Buckley himself!) and a girl who turns out to be from Gent. We share the Pa Thai I had with me as a very unhandy take-away. She's a physiotherapist doing cranio-sacral and four dimensional bodywork since five years, kinesiology and all this lovely universe. She's in the last month of a three month trip where she has been climbing the Inca-trail in Peru, swimming with dolphins and whales in Hawai, and now she's here to learn some thai-massage in Chang Mai. I easily convince to forget about this plan and rather come with me to Pai, we can study together.
The bus trip is long, with nothing special except this stop at a eating place at night, where one of the employees is a lovely lady-boy; funny country...Arrival in the outskirts of Chiang Mai at 5 in the mornin', we jump on pick ups, on the speedway, Roos' enormous bagpack falls down the roof! Luckily the cars behind us can avoid it, no accident, driver has to run back 40 meters to get it. Then to bus station, little visit to the market and at ten bus to Pai. Four hours drive on a 40 year old little puf-puf bus, packed with hilltribe men and women. With their colourfull dresses, small size and sun-worn faces, they could be indios from Peru or Bolivia. So this is where the real journey and the real fun begin. It's a beautifull day, the air is cold and clear, sun shine and sky blue as if they had nothing better to do. A winding road up takes us into the mountains, passing little hammocks with the playing children etc, we all know this apparent romantism of the countryside. Arriving in Pai is almost a choc: it's a lot bigger than I'd thought, there are traffic lights and about a thousand bars, internet cafes, souvenir shops, etc..all lined up one next to the other in this fake neo-hippie town. But I don't care because I am in posession of...secret information! The farmer house guesthouse, just as I had been told, is 15 min away from town, on the other side of the river and in the middle of ricefields with jungle-covered mountains in the back. We arrive there with Roos and Joseph, the NY rastaman who's living in China. We bump on a small crew of Bangkok youngster who sit around on mats in the shade next to a little pond....getting happily drunk in the afternoon. By the way, Thais are extremely heavy drinkers! So we join the crew and their joyfull ceremony, after a few glasses I have a guitar hand, and from there it takes right off to heights of delirious chanting and screaming of a magnitude rarely seen at this time of the afternoon. While I sang, there were "howling" unarticulate interjections, that were supposed to sound like english...We partied for some time there, and it all ended with everyone dancing, me included, playing on four strings because two broke, screaming "freedom, freedom for my people!" Ding , Pohom, Kroy, King and the others subsequently disapeared in the abyss of early evening, Roos and me had dinner and went to sleep. The following day, we got up late, got to town and rented bikes, then we found a teacher in the person of Aomnapha, who lives with her little son Tontang and he's the only boyfriend she needs, he's two, and she has three european pretenders knocking at her door, who want to marry her. But she doesn't need a house, and she doesn't need money, and she doesn't want a husband! She's had enough of that, I think, as the scar on her forehead indicates. Some days later, I gave a massage to a lady who had been burned all over her body: her husband, angry at her coming late, destroyed her motorbike and and splashed boiling water on her...From appearence, women look so free and happy here, it's a change compared to Cairo. There is also a chinese islamic community in Pai, and the burkha styled women and veiled nine year old girls look particulary pathetic in the land of the free. But all this is just appearance. Here as elsewhere, the woman does the job, while the husband plays computer games...
Back to Aom, she's a really good teacher, and we are the best students she's ever seen....She offered us the same amulet than she wears, with a massage master in it, Gomara Pad. Thais are strongly superstitious, and amulets and tatoos all have their secret power. So we have really the perfect private lesson for 5 hours a day. The most challenging with massage are not the techniques, but the state you have to be in, in order to give a massage properly. It's such a difference, if someone is just in his head or is actually "in his body".
That day after having found bikes and arranged classes for the next day, we explored the area on our bikes, went to the hot springs where Thai tourists are boiling eggs in the vulcanic water, and drove along. An hour or so before sunset, we found a quiet spot to sit and contemplate: the light here is very special, sweet almost, just as I imagined "asian" light. It got dark and we were driving home, when we noticed a big roof looking out the trees a little down from the road. We parked our bikes and there in the twilight, all alone and abandonned, with doors and windows big open, stood a Wat, a Temple; no lights inside, we took off our sandals and prudently walked in, not to sure about it... And there, at the end of this otherwise empty place, sat three buddhas behind each other, one bigger than the other, the biggest one being at least 6m high. Sitting there in golden silence, while the wind was blowing through the prayer flags hanging around, and shaking curtains and blue plastic flowers with an enchanting sound. A lot of "stuff" just standing around to the feet of the statues, it was all very bewildering and magic, standing there in the twilight. We eventually lit one of the big candles, and discovered the paintings on the walls, depicting Buddha's life. We sat in silence and celebrated....first encounter with enchanting Asia!!!
As we got out the temple, in a state of mild trance, it was dark with a perfect star-sky. A little red chinese lampion on the roadside made me feel like Tintin in the sky. We decided that we should have new year right here, in this Wat. Some days later, we asked the monks for permission, they said no ploblem, a Wat is a truly public space. Two funny old monks, who have fought in vietnam, sit in front of their TV, get more donation-bags than they can eat and put out their cigarrete just before entering the temple...
We had a quiet and peacefull new year in the Wat, 2005 will be a good year on the path I hope, but we slept early, because the many massages had brought up a lot of things, dreams were heavy, a general period of 'letting go'. Talking of letting go, next morning I woke up a little dull and frozen, not to upmoody, I went to the monks toilet (thai toilet where you sit in der Hocke, fantastic) and had a glorious shit, feeling relieved and safe on Buddhas toilet. So, as far as I'm concerned, dear friends, my year really began there, and I couldn't think of any better omen!!!:)

Happy New Year Thailand, happy New Year Asia. May the wounds left by the Tsunamis heal with time. May all beings be happy.

First flash over Bangladesh

2004-12-30T03:36:00.000-08:00

So here I was in the plane of Biman Airlines, the pride of bangladeshi aviation. And I remembered the wise words of a friend: ' As soon as you'll enter the plane, the journey begins!'... Well, the stewardesses in their nice Saris and the Bangla-passengers in their evenly colourfull dresses made a very nice first impression for sure.
Second impression was that Asia might teach me patience: everyone was seated, it was half past two on a beautifully rainy Zaventem day, and nothing happened. So we waited. And we waited a little more. After three hours of sitting in a metallic tube that is immobilised on the ground, I got a strange feeling...but maybe it was only hunger, and the stewardesses did a great job in giving the impression of normality by simply starting to distribute the meal, while the captain apologised for the delay due to 'paperwork'!
We took off after four hours of hanging around; it was the first time that I saw passangers applaude at the take off! So I sat back in my flower-power-coloured seat, and was absorbed all night by Dan Millman's excellent " The Peaceful warrior". Bangladeshis are very pleasant people, they don't harass you because you keep your light on all night....
Arriving in Dhakka was great fun. As soon as I stepped out of the airport, I felt happy because of the fresh breeze of gasoline entering my lungs, and memories of Cairo coming back, I think I will always love this smell. As I had one day of transit, Biman Air paid me the hotel downtown. On the ride there, I was reminded of Cairo even more, and Bangladesh is more of a Middle-Eastern than an Asian country. It is one of the poorest countries too, the most corrupt according to UN-rating, and it has islamic fundamentalism on the rise, with Pakistan backing bomb attacks on the opposition parties. The monsoon flodds almost half of the country every year, as it is a big delta of five rivers, and there are no women to be seen, no music to be heard, no chichas, no nothing...no fun in Bangladesh!
The only laugh I had was entering my very nice and clean hotelroom, I was thinking how classy all of this was...but for one small detail: above the bed hung a giant painting of some french lanscape, which is very classy too. It didn't seem to have bothered anyone that it was hanging upside down, and I didn't feel like breaking the surrealistic charme by putting it right...

Marc, a former collegue from Bruxelles, works in Dhakka since last year, and he came to get me at the hotel at about one in the afternoon. Dressed in traditional clothes, he looked rather funny, although he himself is everything but funny...He works for an NGO that distributes money to syndicates in 9 asian countries. He realised soon that all this money disappeareds in the pockets of the syndicate leaders....He has married a Cambodgian lady aged 28, six year old daughter...he met her in her village, after less than three weeks, the marriage was arranged...with the help of a translator because she didn't speak a word of english at the time...Now, poor Sope lives secluded in Dakkha, can't go out, can't speak to anyone except her english teacher, cooks for Marc and is three months pregnant! Nice family picture,hmm? Marc doesn't go out after nine, too dangerous. So there he sits and rolls joints, we listen to cambodgian music. The food was excellent. Another positive memory is the walk along the river in middle of downtown, it looks like a lake, you hear no cars, and couples gather on the banks, while teens smoke hashish in little groups.
On my way back, I tried the local "digestive": crumbled nuts and anis along with a weird white paste, rolled in a leaf. You eat it in one piece. It was terribly bitter and I spit it out in a corner. It was about time to get back to the hotel and leave this country with the sinister-looking green flag with a red circle in it....
My night was short due to jetlack, and so from three to six in the morning, I practised yoga, meditation and the art of killing mosquitoes with closed eyes...
"Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love!" Mosqitoes NOT included.

Next morning, they told me Biman Air was very sorry, but the flight was delaied...But we had only two hours of waiting at Dhakka airport, during which I shared my belgian chocolate with a loud bunch of Punjabis off to Koh Samui in South Thailand...I pray they're home now.

And then I arrived in Thailand, where ground temperature was 27 Celsius, a plane with the david star on it had just delivered this years israeli backpackers, the hungry sex-tourists were leading the way out of the plane and standing under a giant sign reading "Welcome to Thailand, land of the smile", I was welcomed by the most unfriendly and sexually frustated airport stewardess I've ever seen!

I immediately liked the country and decided to be smiling in Thailand...

...

WELCOME

2004-12-27T05:33:00.000-08:00

DEAR ALL,

Hello and thanks and congratulations and shitloads of jubilations that we all made it here!
This is the first entry in my notebook, and I'm not going to say a lot, except that I'm fine, which might be of some interest for you ( I like to believe so). As I'm writing this, South East Asia has been hit by the worst earthquake in 50 years and thousands have died.
I was about to go South two days ago, but stuck to the original plan which was to visit a massage school here in Pai, Northeast from Chang Mai, in the North of Thailand. I was in the bus all last night, so it's only today that I discover all the horror that happened a few Km lower...I can only pray that none of you has had friends down there right now...They expect a second quake, so I'll be staying here for some time, doing what I planned to do and evaluating if there is anything I could do at some point.
You all have a bellyfull of good times and the happiest new year!
In my next entry (out soon inch'Allah), I'll say a word on my flight, Bangladesh, flying fishes in the pan and all that...
bless all of you
see U I hope