I'm taking January off of writing to do a meditation retreat in Maine. The story will continue next year! Looking forward to sharing the journey into the Himalayas again in February.
"The greatest act of kindness is to tame you own mine."
Friday, December 30, 2016
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Operation Katmandu
"Where is Kneeee-pawl?" My Tennessee grandmother asks.
"In the Himalayan mountains."
"Oh well. It'll be cold. Watch out for 'em avalanches!"
For my other kin-folk, a quick history of 'kneeee-pawl".
Nepal, the size of North Carolina is bordered by India, which is fives times bigger than Texas, and Tibet, which is almost six times bigger than California. Nepal is the little fish in big ponds. Although one-third of the country was lost to the British East India Company during the colonization of India, Nepal was never conquered. Nor was its neighbor, Bhutan. The rugged Himalayan mountains bordering, what is today known as Sikkim, India's most Northern state, tremendously helped Nepal's sardine sized army compared to Britian's during the wars of the eighteenth century.
Why I am comparing fish to this landlocked country?
Because I compose from the shoreline of Palm Beach, a land that has me gasping for air the more I reflect on Nepal's awakening waters. I drive down perfectly paved roads lined with shiny cars and nearly empty public buses. Mile long plazas edged by hedges manicured as perfectly as the women who shop them. Target, Tj-Maxx, Burger King, Wendys. Target. Tj_maxx, Burger King, Wendy's. Target Tj-maxx, Burger King, Wendy's. Safe in our own A/C bubble at the red light, we politely only look ahead. Or down to check Facebook. The stillness has me biting my nails. I press the windows open. The silence spooks me.
. The third most polluted city in the world according to the Kathmandu Post. The city is one of the fastest growing ones in Asia at 4% per year. 2.5 million people are live in the Kathmandu valley; in 2001 it was estimated to be around 600,000 people. Still Nepal is basically rural with only 17% of the total people living in cities according to World Bank. If you visit, these far away random facts will choke you. Be prepared for:
Operation Kathmandu
I long for Kathmandu's rush hour suffocation as I cruise through monotonous south Florida. The exhaust of retired old buses other countries sell for cheap. The bicycles overloaded with oranges or balanced by wicker baskets of greens. The scooters the entire Nepali family squeezes on. The cows drinking from cloudy puddles. The tourist only taxis and the Mercedes of government officials. The uniformed school kids, the colorful saris, the monk's crimson robes all wearing face masks. Without marked lanes, the streets are home to thousands of independent shops stacked atop of one another. Somehow, I never once saw an accident. Some spontaneous current sweeps everyone along, as did the human traffic lights. Their was a strange sense of calmness in the midst of what appears to be mayhem. People yell without anger. Boys pound the sides of the jammed buses without threat. The passengers touch like the shops, finding space and naturally filling it. Yet, when the fumes still linger through my face mask and refuse to rise from the city's oven-like buses, I long for Maine's vacant highways and fresh air.
I land in Kathmandu fifty hours of travel later. Of the five immigration kiosks, two are working. The fit Americans here to rebuild a school are in my line. They kill time playing a game called bouncy, stretch and 'stay hydrated' as the Chinese, Indians, Europeans and I looked on from our stiff places in line. The mystery meat I blessed during the flights has my belly rocked; if only my body could agree with my prayers. The excited Indian children are too shy to join when invited. We Americans, the confident, spoiled, happy babies of world.
"Would you like some help?" the self appointed American assists my line with the finicky screen. His kindness, makes me question my own as we fill out my form.
"And purpose of visit?"
"Pilgrimage." I select the button beneath the tourist option. I am not just another foreigner here to take pictures. Nor am I here to build something new. I am here to learn the sacred Vajrayogini dance.
Apparently, Port-au-Prince's humbling has worn off. In Haiti, my theater project at an American summer camp forced me to take off a costume I didn't realize I was wearing: Cool and in control. Entitled to teach. The Haitian dance troupe I joined gave me a new costume I reject: the privileged American; One that Nepal would teach me to wear with humility.
Its past midnight by the time I clear customs. My Nepali friend, Shilpa, spots me in the crowd of bewildered tourists and shouting taxi drivers. I am chauffeured to her home. After spending the summer working minimum wage at a bakery in Ashland, Oregon to pay for expensive dance classes, sleeping on a friend's couch, and scrounging meals from the refrigerators I was babysitting for, I awake in palace life.
The marble staircase ascends five floors before leading to a rooftop of the world: a view of the Himalaya's white silhouettes looming above the city's smog. Every floor is filled with statues and paintings taking one back into a time when Kathmandu was at its royal height; days far gone. Shilpa's Newari family, one of the original peoples of the Kathmandu Valley, has been creating Buddhist art for generations. The lineage of artisans her father continues to support can be seen working in his building across the street. Each morning the works in progress are brought by for review before being delivered to his curio shop in a Durbar Mar, the Worth Ave of Nepal. The leisurely morning routine of tea and the door bell ringing with art has been replaced by coffee and scrolling Craig's List for last minute holiday help ads. Most of the South Florida gigs require slutty Santa suits; too bad I'm in a fat phase
The five foot golden Tara statue in the living room captures me whenever I pass. Tara is a tantric Buddhist deity who is known as the "the mother of liberation". I look at her beautifully carved abs, slender fingers in mudra, meditative stare and golden jewels with awe and envy. Her three eyes are slit open and 'gaze compassionately into emptiness'; an expression I read about over and again, but have no realization of. All I know is I want to embody Tara and not my flabby clumsy limbs that cannot remember much of the choreography I spent all summer learning. Tara's deeper meanings would remain oblivious to me until the final days of my journey with Shilpa, one that led me to the heart of Buddhist dance.
Dance as an offering. Dance as prayer.
I snap out of fantasizing how I can get as hot as Tara when called to breakfast in the courtyard. Her mother serves the first of the sugary, strong 'milk tea' that replaces the coffee addiction I developed in freezing New England. A plate of hard-boiled eggs that have been lightly pan seared and dusted in turmeric is served. Following Shilpa, I use my fingers to scoop the cumin flavored cauliflower and potatoes into freshly baked roti bread. Her mother fills my plate asking rhetorically if I'd like more. I would not learn to fend her off until (like her husband and children) I cover my plate with both hands and refuse to move them until she puts the pan down. Most of the time, I only pretend to stop her. I want seconds, thirds, fourths, anything to stop the battles between my head and heart: Writing vs meditation. Memoir writers seek the I, my, me. They try to solidify identity into a story, while true Buddhist meditation seeks to undo the story and dissolve the I, me, my. Traditional dancer vs. free form artist. There is form to be followed to receive the lineage's wisdom. Who cares? I want to make up own dance. Buddhist nun vs. motherhood. Kids = real job! All the facets of self glaring at each other, not realizing they apart of the same diamond. A diamond in the ruff.
Kathmandu's hidden lessons for "the dancer on pilgrimage" are ones I am still trying to understand. Why are the well educated, well off Americans so at war with themselves? Maybe its just my war. Everyone else seems to be happily Christmas-ing along one item at a time.
This war is exhausting. I've been fighting it for so long. It feels normal to fight against how things are and how people are. Stuck in how things should be. How I should be. How to get to the next best place. Its never enough: more more more. next next next. America makes the battle lines within me more violent. I am trying to hide from the draft in Kathmandu.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Hong Kong, where 'east meets west'
Wal-mart isles begin here: Port of Hong Kong
Like a well programmed consumer, I shopped for the cheapest ticket to Kathmandu, which left me with a 20 hour lay over in Hong Kong. I probably would have saved money by purchasing the more expensive ticket, but looking back...venturing into the Asian mid-night was worth every Hong Kong Dollar spent for a four am conversation that once again made me realize: I am running. Yet, its foreign lands that exaggerate just who you are.
The mirror reflects the closest when the furthest away from home.
After a 45 minute double-decker bus ride from the airport (located on the island of Hong Kong) to the mainland, I'm lost looking for the Sincere House hostel in the Kowloon neighborhood. The Chinese street signs feel like props in a film I agreed to, but I forgot my lines. The only one I remember is my mother's voice, "Don't leave the airport in the middle of the night. Its dangerous!" I wonder through seedy piss and fish smelling alleyways, wondering if I should have listened. Not just this time, but all the times I let her wise words slide beneath a rug of defiance, woven with threads of fierce independence. To begin recalling all the times I wrote her off is beating a rug out. I don't want to see my dirt. Not here. Not now. I've been up for 20 hours am a navigating with an internal compass that can't find its true north. It points into an addiction fueled past leaving me more lost in the moment: somewhere in a Cantonese current; the main ethnicity of Kowloon.
The foreign sea of bodies, lean like fish, swim across eight lanes of traffic onto sidewalks lined with street vendors selling everything from Doc Martins to baskets piled with strange roots. The stores are packed with young Chinese people shopping in between selffies. Instagram is legal here, unlike the neighboring communist China. Trash cans overflow with styro-foam to go boxes. The air is thick and lingers with exhaust fumes. Some wear face masks. Their sandaled feet are without any dirt. Groups of girls pass with powdered faces like the Cathway Pacific airline stewardesses. They remind me of geisha dolls with their white porcelain skin, red lips and penciled eyebrows. There slender fingers as delicate as their soft spoken voices asking passengers what they'd like for dinner.
"I ordered the vegetarian meal. No, I won't take the pasta dish. It has gluten!" The man seated in front of me reminds me who I've been for past eight vegan-ish years: snobby, strict and ungrateful. As the stewardess informs they only have meatloaf, I say thank you, wishing my meditation teacher in Maine could see me now, eating mysterious meat somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
"I'm not cooking this Tyson chicken! It's from slaughter houses where they burn the peaks off and let their feet grow around the cages," I bitch during a retreat where my work/trade is cooking.
"That's all in your mind. Is any of that happening in this moment? In this kitchen there is a package of chicken."
"But it did happen!"
"I agree. It's a slick world."
"Why not buy organic free-range?"
"Do tonglen or dwell in your negativity. It is up to you, Anna."
Tonglen is a Buddhist practice where one breathes in the suffering of another and exhales healing prayers. It's a practice of exchanging one's pain for another's. I tried explaining this to my younger brother only to confirm his belief that his sister is crazy and off to a country where she will get even crazier. He asks what I am going to do Nepal as he drives me to the airport. I consider explaining how I want to do 111,111 prostrations with a shaved head; my image of Buddhism that would later be shattered in the land where Buddha was born.
"I am going to trek the Himalayan mountains with a Nepali girl I met this summer at a Nepalese Temple in Portland, Oregon," I say as he cuts off other drivers at 100 mph in his brand new BMW. By the time we reach the airport, I yell at him for driving like "an asshole"... For hitting the dog the night before.... For everything I held in while staying at his house for the past few days. He hands me a wad of $100s for my trip and says be safe. I walk to the nearest bench and ball for losing my patience and leaving on a bad note. He gave me the money but I won't ask for because I don't feel I deserve it. The money I can't figure out how to make yet with my odd jobs that I convince myself I do because I need as much time as possible for my spiritual practices. Practices that Nepal made me realize I am hiding behind. My brother shows up shamelessly; this I admire and am utterly repulsed by.
Siblings, those we love enough to hate on. Hate that hardens one's heart to know the its softness of love beneath.
I depart for Kathmandu with a heavy and surprised heart.. for once I am not travelling on a tight wad budget. I'm travelling with gifted dollars that make me question my worth with each purchase, and eventually remind me of unconditional love during the coming months.
Somehow I finally find the Sincere House, the cheapest hostel in Hong Kong according to a Google search. On the 12th floor of a weathered cement building, Keith, the Chinese guy who checks me in, tells me how loves the The Heat after he sees my Miami passport. "American coaches. So good. Keep players on court, off streets." I share how Dwayne Wade's foundation gave me money to teach children film after school. "You like true American. Good person."
I close my eyes wondering what it means to be American....we are good people, whose corporations AKA a government that does bad things... By fault, we are guilty, so we try to be extra perfect....if only gluten-free could equal guilt free...Sleepless, I step outside my tiny stark white hospital like room.
Keith is leaning over the balcony strung with laundry like all the floors below the open courtyard. Jet lagged? He asks and the conversation carries itself into the dawn.
-Where do you live in USA?
- I just came from California where my brother lives.
-My sister is there. I've been waiting for visa for 13 years, only less than ten to go.
-Wow.
-I can't wait to get to America one day and buy a mustang from the 70s. Yeah, an old one. Make up for all the years I lose.
-Lose?
-Yeah,not getting to America sooner.
- So... you are waiting to start your life?
- I'm missing out on the good life.
Keith goes on about all the things he wants in America: to go camping, drive across the country, have a big house and a pool, buy a semi truck like his sister's husband in LA and have a Mexican drive it. Keith works 7 days a week; on Sundays he does half days. This buys you a shoe box apartment in Hong Kong. He wants spacious living and ease, the life I reject yet live, and now judge him for wanting. Like him, I realize I too am waiting for life to start. In Nepal I'll become a real Buddhist. A real writer. A real dancer.
Our conversation reminds me of ones I've had in Haiti and British Guyana. Trying to tell people who have it harder than me, that having it easier is actually harder in other ways. Impossible. I can barely wrap my mind around it, let alone theirs.
I wonder the dark streets until I find a street vendor frying things. I dip into strange sauces feeling grateful and guilty for spending the first of my brother's money. Skinny locals stop and eat one stick of fried mystery before moving on. I've eaten five and now feel like the fat American.
Hong Kong is alive, although most shops are closed until dawn frames the city's race to build higher skyscrapers than Malaysia. On certain blocks it feels like Miami Beach as Asian looking Amy Whinehouses in high heels stubble out of night clubs,their dark eye make up looking as smudged up as their dates. Other blocks are all suits and ties. The skeleton homeless lined up outside an ancient temple confirms: Hong Kong has the highest income gap in all of Asia.
Of the 7.2 billion people crammed into Hong Kong, there are 55 are billionaires. Before departing for Kathmandu I hang out with their kids in the airport as I sip my $8.00 cappuccino in the cafe across from Chanel; loafers are $20,000 Hong Kong Dollars. I stand next their flawless skin, shinny straightened hair and Comme des Garcons t-shirts that will be knocked by Forever 21. In the cosmetics shop I watch a teenager purchase $40 Dior lip gloss in every shade. I search for dissatisfaction with the material world on their beautiful faces. I want to see how money doesn't lead to happiness. Because that's what Buddhism promises. And to feel better about my holey goodwill sweater and bitten fingernails. I look like shit because this body will one day die. It won't go with me, only how I lived. I feel a tinge of doubt in my justifications for not taking care of myself as I stare into the cosmetics magnified mirror at dark circles under my eyes. Doubts masking the lies I tell myself. Doubts that unveil themselves in a retreat I will attend with other lost westerns looking east.
The same romantic feeling I had of exotic Haitian voodoo dance healing me creeps up the moment step outside the Kathmandu airport: What was I thinking? Ancient Buddhist dance! This city is going to swallow me just like Port-au-Prince, and spit me into the harsh reality that people are suffering way worse than me. Ironically, like Haiti in 2012, I travel to Nepal one year after its earthquake. This time I packed light. Too light.
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