Category Archives for Uncategorized

To the young boy who thought it was just a joke

May we all come to see all life as valuable. ALL LIFE. Whether of different gender or color or creed or culture or two legs or four legs or no legs. ALL. LIFE. IS. VALUABLE. and worth cherishing and nurturing and celebrating. All of it.

Violence in your thoughts leads to violence in your mind leads to violence in your words leads to violence in your actions leads to encouraging others to follow the same ways of violence. Even if you are not raising your fists against another, thinking and speaking towards them with violence is still acting with the same intent as if you were. You have the choice and the ability to bring what you want into this word and your actions and your thoughts matter. They matter very much and they do make a big difference.
Please stop the violence.
Please stop the violence.
Please stop the violence.

Barcelona in Berlin 

you’re walking home down the cold dark street and as you pass the place on the corner you hear the rapid arpeggios being skillfully drawn from the guitar and stop mesmerized by the skill of the musician and the passionate voice of the chords, and the bar man sees you through the window and beckons at you with a chiding grin on his face to enter and be greeted inside with warm candlelight and more open smiles and the long silky ears of a big sweet basset hound and exuberant Barcelona “tttthhhhssss” sliding through the air and the Spanish ladies that confidently take the floor with sultry eyes and languid hands and encourage you out to join them in smooth hips rolls and graceful flourishes and joyful appreciation of tempestuous music and then names are shared and compliments and teasing woven through talk of San Francisco and Barcelona and Berlin and change and age and your bed calls again again and you leave promising to return tomorrow, and you will, because there’s magic in the night here and it blossoms with glowing delight in cozy little pockets just waiting for you and to be there.

The train

I arrive in this day in it’s beginning.
My eyes open in this day in this land
before you have laid your heads down
to sleep yesterday, my friends.

We are cresting the wave of this dawn
in a slow-rolling train
fueled by the back-breaking sawahs,
the burning of plastic-filled trash,
the rivers choked with refuse,
the dishonorable care of animals,
the shouting loudspeakers to God,
the staticky vibrations of places
never empty of people.

My friends,
the veil of wealth is clouding our eyes.
We think we are at the forefront of the wave,
but in reality
we are at the rear of the train
being propelled forward by the advancing heaviness of multitudes.

We cannot reach the new day without encompassing all of this in love.

I dance

The long lines of rice,
the carefully banked and flooded fields
edged with leafy umbrellas of cassava and papaya
and trellised rows calling vegetables up from the ground.
Bent workers wading through muddy waters
below mountains that appear out of murky skies
and shield their sharp summits in downy billows.
All past the patchwork towns,
the shiny green-walled cupolas,
the rainbow red roof tiles,
all through the sun’s stretching arms,
the music plays
and I dance.
I dance.
I dance.

Further reflections from Indonesia

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I’ve been 36 days in Indonesia so far, though without internet for a fair portion of that and I feel a bit behind on sharing observations, so here’s a random collection:

– I think I’ve finally adjusted to being in such humid hot climate again, though I keep forgetting how quickly the equatorial sun can crisp me. Seriously, if I walk around for even ten or fifteen minutes outside in the middle of the day I go inside and discover that my exposed skin is noticeably pinker. Wearing hijab makes a lot of sense in this respect.

– Despite the insane amounts of sugar they put in things here, they have shockingly missed the memo on doughnuts, which are merely fried dough and have nothing to do with sugar.

– It only took me eight days to miss tacos, which should not be interpreted to reflect badly on Indonesian food, but rather upon my enduring love of tacos.

– People. People, everywhere. Holy crap, so many people.

– I’m getting used to a fairly consistent low-level of confusion. “Did they actually hear my order?” “Hmmm…the food has arrived, but will my drink ever come before we leave?” “Is this the way we are supposed to go? Was there a sign back there? Is this actually a road?…” “They just answered Yes(or No), but it doesn’t seem like they really understood what I was asking…” “That answer to my question, didn’t actually answer my question and also gave me five more…”

– Money is confusing here. Banknotes begin at 1,000 and continue (5,000…10,000…20,000…50,000…100,000) and prices can often be seen in millions (e.g. 3,250,000Rph). It’s roughly about 12 or 13 USD to Rph, so I default to dividing by 10, which equates to a lot of decimal moving.
It took me about two weeks to get used to all the zeros, though I still sometimes mess up converting things in my head. So far it isn’t clear to me why they still keep all the zeros since most things are priced in units of 1,000, though I’m sure there’s an economic principle involved such as might also explain why we still use Daylight Savings Time in the US and don’t use the metric system…you tell me.

– I arrived in the beginning of the rainy season, though so far, it hasn’t rained very often. Do people still not believe in global warming??

– I am appalled daily by the general lack of responsibility to trash here. In the bigger cities like Jakarta, Yogyakarta and (I think) Denpasar, there is trash collection and some street cleaning. Even so, people seem to not even think twice about throwing their plastic bottles, wrappers, etc. right on the ground or out a car window. Rivers and creeks are apparently great places to dump waste and even better locations are beautiful viewpoints. Those ones are especially great places to put fish bits and really stinky trash, as I’ve experienced. We went to one of the local tourist sites yesterday, the Taman Sari, and there were piles of trash collecting in some of the corners as if even celebrated historical palaces aren’t to be respected and that extra price they charge foreigners at tourist sites is obviously not part of the cleaning budget.
As poor as some of the rural areas and a lot of the people are I’m rather surprised they aren’t at least collecting recycling for money (admittedly there would need to be a recycling center of sorts for that to work). It gives a lot of good food for thought about what might possibly resolve the issue, about how much this is a disregarded problem all over the world, what would be effective ways of instilling that sense of responsibility in different cultures, about how much this is a disregarded problem in my own culture…

– I am often distressed by the general lack of care and respect for animals. It’s painful to see. Who am I to tell that carriage driver that he should voluntarily not earn any money this week/month because his horse is obviously very sick and malnourished and needs water and food and rest from work? What about the dead cat in a cage at the hotel? Just…why do I even have to be asking about a dead cat in a cage??

Also along this line, luak coffee, which originated in Indonesia as a wild foraging rarity, and is now produced by extremely inhumane industrial methods: http://world.time.com/2013/10/02/the-worlds-most-expensive-coffee-is-a-cruel-cynical-scam/
The wikipedia article explains a little more about the history of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

– Admittedly I may not have been in the areas where they are or maybe I don’t know enough to distinguish them, but so far I have only seen less than ten possibly homeless people begging for money.
Less than ten, in all these millions of people.
That’s very impressive, especially in contrast to my Bay Area experience.
It has been explained to me that in Indonesian culture family is #1. Family always comes first. There are many different cultures comprising the archipelagos of Indonesia, but in most of them people live in a large extended family structure, and a lot of times even the names they go by are derived from their position in the family. Generally each family also has land allotted to it, which is used for living and also rice fields and gardens and they don’t often sell it (because they use it to live on and by its production), so, even if the family is poor, the whole family can be provided for.
(I realize there are probably many cultural examples that contradict what I am saying, I am merely relating the little bit I have learned so far in my admittedly limited experience.)

– You can very easily eat a solid meal for less than $3USD here, which I’m quite enjoying. It’s mostly rice (or soup) with some sort of meat and usually not a lot of vegetables, but it’s a lot more trustworthy than American food at the same price as it doesn’t come out of a box and it’s usually cooked right in front of you (as long as you don’t mind the MSG).

– Fresh Indonesian tofu (cooked) is the worst thing I think I’ve ever eaten. I’ve had some since then that didn’t taste exactly like a steaming pile of cow dung, but I’m still rather leery of the vegetarian dishes and their tofu content after that experience.

– There is an amazing selection of fruit here and a usually disappointing selection of vegetables. I’ve tried several new fruits that I’ve never even seen or heard of before of which my new favorite is sirsak (soursop). I really wish we had it in the States.

– There is also an amazing variety of flowers and plants and trees here, though I mostly have no clue what they are. We haven’t yet been able to find a botanical garden, nor a good English bookstore and so far my attempts at asking what plant that is have resulted in “that’s a flower” or “that’s grass” (purple flowering plant that is definitely not a grass).
I may be able to figure some of it out now that we have consistent internet access…

– I am almost daily reminded of and given opportunity to appreciate the level of quality and extent of the education I have received in my home country and also the easy access to information that I take for granted.

– I am tired of being stared at. all. the. time.

Only 24 more days to go! Let’s see what further adventures bring us!

Cultural Immersion Lessons

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So far I’ve had two occurrences of scaring a child into crying just by being white.  That’s a new and notable experience in my world.

White tourists are still fairly novel outside of the few cities on the island of Flores (Indonesia).  Adults and children alike will quite happily yell “Bule!” (foreigner) at you as go past on the street and the younger generations seem to view you as a personal gift of English practice delivered from Heaven and will descend upon you en masse and wait upwards of 20 minutes at your elbow to gain your attention for long enough to practice even the tiniest amount of English they have. My friend and I being two young white foreign women, we quite often get to “enjoy” the experience of men approaching us, quickly exhausting their few phrases of English, then proceeding to just hover around and stare at us for annoyingly long periods of time before they finally give up and wander away.

While that all sounds rather charming when experienced one at a time, after being delayed on a busy market street in a rural town for three hours it quickly becomes extremely overwhelming because it. never. stops. and you realize your dearly held beliefs in common rules about personal physical and mental space don’t exist at all in this new land. (Seriously. The teenage girls in the schoolyard persisted in yelling at us from across the street and clapping their hands trying to engage our attention even though we were obviously involved in dealing with an issue. for. hours.)

Through those very long hours at the kiosk as my friend tried to solve her telephone problem, I had the joy of being entertained, and entertaining, a small herd of beautiful children with nothing more than silly hand games and faces and pictures. They spoke to me, even though I know next to no Indonesian and they didn’t know English, and I tried to figure out what they were saying and respond. It was a wonderful experience.

One of the great things I got from those few hours was how easily I could enjoy their company simply because they weren’t expecting anything from me, nor could I expect them, at their age, to be cognizant of whether they were being rude or disrespectful toward someone from a different culture. They were simply joyfully curious and happy to be engaged with, as was I.
It was a very gentle reminder to check myself on how I was being in the world and is still giving me a lot of good food for thought.

Thank heavens for the unassuming sweetness of children in the world to bring us back to the root of ourselves.

The Power of Myth and Fear

I’ve been meaning to read the Power of Myth for rather a long time, and finally, on the last day of November, as I spent long sleepless hours crossing the Pacific from San Francisco to Taipei to Indonesia, I listened through the audiobook of it. There’s a part near the end where Mr. Campbell is talking about one of the biggest messages he has learned from all of his studies of culture and myth and he summarizes it as “Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid!”. His words immediately struck a chord with me and I stopped the track, and pondered my reaction for a minute, and came to the conclusion that I strongly disagree with that. I would have to say Follow your bliss and don’t let the fear stop you!

There have been plenty of instances in the last several weeks leading up to my departure from America that I felt fear. Fear of the great unknown that I am so surely thrusting myself into for the next five (or more) months. Fear at having spent so long happily planning and preparing for such an exciting adventure to be beset by such doubts in the last few weeks. Am I making the wrong choice to leave for so long? Have I abused my friends’ kindness by asking and receiving so much help from them? What am I not prepared for? What if I run out of money before the end? What if I spend so much effort crossing the world and I don’t actually have any enlightening experiences and return home without any clearer idea of my place in the world and what I should be doing in it? And plenty more besides…

It is quite human, and quite common, to have fear. Fear of small everyday things. Fear of big all-encompassing life-affecting things. It is quite a hard and uncomfortable thing to recognize and be willing to admit to yourself that you have fear. Many, many people choose not. They go through life making choices and actions to avoid their fear, to keep it at arms-width, or further, even though, really, it never truly goes away. It will always be hanging over your shoulder, the great unacknowledged elephant in the room of your life.

There is nothing wrong in reacting that way, though I believe that in doing so you miss out on very valuable life-changing opportunities. Let yourself be afraid. Be with your fear and see what it is. The opportunity you have is that if you acknowledge it, and face it, and examine where it originates from, fear will show you where your challenges really are in life. It will show you the places inside yourself that need help and need your attention.

The real challenges are never truly the travel delays, the inclement weather, the cost of things, the loss of luggage or personal items, etc. There are plenty of inspiring stories from around the world that prove this. The real challenges are the ones triggered inside of you when there are obstacles in the way of where you want to go. How do you react to those obstacles? How do you let them affect your way forward?

If you let the obstacle, the fear, rule the situation, then you give over your power of choice to that obstacle, that fear, and you let it make the choices for you. There may be very difficult situations you find yourself in and the choices available to you may not be anything close to the choices you would prefer to have, but there always is a choice available.
Yes or no. To take action or not. To turn back or go forward.
There is always the power of choice available to you.

While it may seem easier to let someone or something else make the decision for you, to not face the scary thing, to not accept the responsibility for where you are going, how much are you missing out on by doing so? How wonderfully might things turn out if you didn’t let the fear stop you? How will you know?
If you don’t let yourself be afraid, if you ignore your fear and run away from facing it, you may never find out.

Mr. Campbell, I would like to add to your message. I would like to say: Let yourself be afraid. Follow your bliss and don’t let the fear stop you!

Nov 19th, 2015

Ahh, Oregon…there’s something unshakably seductive in how the layers upon layers of your mountainous waves roll and break against the over-stretching sky mile after mile that calls to all the raw wildness hidden inside me. 
I shall return someday to delve deeper into your green oceans of unfinished discovery.  

 

Prayer for the world Nov 13th, 2015

May we all stop believing that violence of any kind is ever an acceptable response to anything. 

May we all stop perpetuating the limiting beliefs that keep us separate from each other, that keep us from acknowledging that we are all people living this life here on this earth together. 

May we all forgive and love ourselves and each other without restriction. 

May we all find peace together. 

September 18th, 2015

 It is a magical place, this earth,
to be able to hold so much beauty
in every degree.
In the story I write,
we drive fearlessly forward
into the land of the sun,
leaving the darkness behind us
and there is no end of love.