saying goodbye to 2013

end of the year and i have nothing much to say. at first glance i feel what can i say? its been a heavy, empty year, without much change.

but then... i read the last post of 2012.

hmm... no change? i wonder how i even thought that.  i marvel at how different this year has been. the family fights - so few this year and when we fought it was about the present and how to make the future better. not about the past - we were done with most of that in 2012. yep, forward movement i think - what an amazing change.

and this year i doubt if i had many days when i felt like a vapour and wondered if i existed in body. body pain - back pain - had been the mainstay of the year and after july i cannot remember a day without pain. hmm... very much felt and experienced and was in my body this entire year.

i began acupuncture two weeks ago. acupuncture apparently kick starts the body's natural healing. hoping and praying.

and this year my sensei left and the dojo passed on to us. from hierarchal learning we passed on to collective learning and it seems to be working.

hmmm... a very practical year with many things to deal with. too many. things gone wrong or just things. not that much time to dream, to stare to walk aimlessly.

i didn't really like the year and am glad to see its tail finally.

but we adopted a cat in november. rescued by a friend - a little white cat found abandoned by her in october. the biggest and most positive change of the year. he's brought us together as a family more and more. shibi thinks he is auggie, our doggie, come back.

well - lots to reflect on now.

hope you have your wish lists for the year ready for the year. i do :)
what do i want for my body?
my heart? what kind of friends and relationships?
my spirit and soul?
what do i wish to accomplish in the outer world and in my inner world?
what growth internally and successes externally do i hope for?

happy 2014 to everyone.

Art and Propoganda

Last evening I saw a play on an issue I feel rather passionately about - violence against women. When asked after the play what I thought about it I sort of lost my voice. Such an important issue - so how could I say I didn't think much of the play?

This post is hard to write. It's very hard to criticise any effort to give a voice to these issues of domestic violence and the silence around them. It's hard to criticise artists who are working towards the goal of empowering women to speak their stories. But the feelings of disappointment - and 'gulp' distaste linger on and so I try to sort them out by writing.

The story is about a young Indian woman married three years who comes to her mother's home in the middle of the night after her husband beats her. The mother, a widow lives with her elder sister a single woman. The mother insists the girl should return to her husband and the aunt insists she should make a police complaint. The other two characters in the plot are the husbands sister who comes to take the battered woman back home and the friend who stands up for the rights of women. The two other ghosts in the story - men who are only talked about but don't appear on stage - are the battering abusive husband and the father who turns out to be a rapist.

I had issues with so many things about the play but I will only focus on a few:

- The biggest issue I had with the characters was that the only woman who really championed women's rights, the friend, was a white woman. She was written in almost as a saviour and I wondered are we in India still so internally colonised that we need our saviour to be white? 

- The aunt  began as a strong character who did not think much of marriage or men. But this attitude was explained by her being raped by her sister's husband. Are women only independent and single because they have had an adverse encounter like this? 

- The dialogue showed Indian women and society in a rather bad light - with dialogue like 'return to your husband because divorced women don't get invited to parties.' I am unsure what lines like that convey beyond a shallowness of the writer in approaching the complex cultural conditioning and inner conflicts of individuals in the story. The play stayed at the surface level, telling events but never exploring the depths.

- The two men mentioned in the play are a battering husband who flirts with his wifes best friend and the rapist man who gets away with it. Don't men come in shades that are more positive?

I know that art can be used as a tool to shed light on societal wrongs and correct them.  I know artists play an important role in changing the problems in cultures. Yet with art that is so heavy handed and simplistic I wonder what message finally remains with the audience. I guess that is the question that is most important to me as I grapple with my own characters. I tend to lecture on about issues I feel deeply about too, some of my dialogues when I write them feel more like an academic thesis - but that's in my first and second drafts. I do hope that by the third draft I can bring in depth and subtlety and the finished product will be more than just propaganda.

It's been a long gap between posts. I've been a bit busy and a bit lost. Perhaps emerging from the neurotic chaos that this combination creates?

to read or not to read

i haven't written much in several days now and i feel a bit cranky. probably because writing is one of the things that helps me to know who i am and what i really want at any moment. 

i have been reading a lot for my coursera course on sci-fi and fantasy. our first text is grimm's tales and i am really hating wading through heaps and heaps of them. i began with enthusiasm but soon i just started feeling ill. i wondered why such tales would be crafted? are they really stories we want to tell our children? some of the 'morals' seem disgusting. all sorts of unsavoury characters flourish, trickery is rewarded and the gender bias makes me want to hit someone. luckily my daughter tells me i did not read them to her even in their later, more sanitized forms. 

but right now i still read on - its like a madness. i have to just finish them. why, because i signed up for the course? is that reason enough to go on like this? i have been so busy and still in between things - on buses, waiting in lines - i read them in the hope of finishing them in time - before the next text is up for reading. i no longer enjoy the tales and yet i read on. all my empty spaces, my rejuvenating white spaces, are filled up  by these tales and i feel exhausted.

i am really confused. part of me wants to scream and stop the insane reading. another part of me believes that if i just push and get through and do the work set for the course i might learn something important. i might even be changed from the inside. just push on and i will find a rainbow at the end of ten weeks. 

is it a conflict between long term benefit and instant relief? but it also seems something else that i cannot yet pin down. it's something like intuitively knowing that this course of action is detrimental to me, to my real goals and yet not trusting that knowing. have i have lost touch with what i really want or maybe i am just not listening to my inner sense that is giving me a clear message that this pursuit is meaningless? it's also a tussle between outer expert knowledge and inner experience. i normally favour the latter - am i missing out?

back and forth and back and forth - if i don't read i am missing out... if i read i am not getting on with my own writing... but this might be a chance to deepen my writing... or i might just feel at the end of ten weeks that i wasted yet another few months... 

tied up in knots. unsure of how it will resolve. thoughts welcome :)

delhi gang rape sentence

I just read another article on the Delhi gang rape sentence. This one titled 'Delhi gang rape death sentence won't make India safer for women', by Monisha Rajesh. Of all the articles on similar themes that I had read this one has got to be the most patchy and badly thought through. 

What bugged me first is the title itself. It was not for rape that the death sentence was passed and it certainly was not  to appease those baying for blood. India does not yet have the death sentence for rape - I am shocked that a journalist writing on this would not even know this or wrongly represent it in the title. Secondly the title suggests that another sentence would have been better in this case or specifically that another sentence might have made India safer for women. If that is the case why not suggest the sentence and if that was not the intention of the writer then maybe the writer should have thought carefully and chosen another title.

The writer then has gone on through the article just using bits and and pieces of commonplace information that she has not even bothered to connect up well together. It feels like she has just lifted them off other articles that actually dealt more thoroughly with each issue. I am left unsure of what the writer really wants to say about the issue except be controversial? She seems to have not one original thought in the article nor really want to even rearrange other thoughts in any new way that makes one think deeply on this topic. 

But what bugged me the most is the writer seems to present it as an either/or situation. That now this awful sentence is passed the discussion will not continue. Does she mean to say that if there had been some lighter sentence then at least the conversation would continue? The Indian public is not stupid that we feel that just this sentence will make the country safer -  not one of those crying for justice ever felt that i think - and nobody is 'hushed up' by the sentence, and even when media stops 'talking' about rape many conversations continue.

Not sure how to conclude this post but this really is bad journalism at its worst - at least in my opinion. It's an issue i feel passionately about and it hurts me to see it handled this way.

What do I think about the Delhi sentence? That I cannot really say in a handful of paragraphs but I do feel that nothing less would have given some sense of justice to the victim's family especially after the  judgement given for the juvenile involved. 

friendship

what kind of a friend am i? what do i value in a friend? i am not sure, but this week i got a chance to reflect on this. i wish this post was just a list of qualities that i look for in friendship but its more complicated than that and quite hard to write.

do i fight with those closest to me more than others? do i tolerate more in them and at the same time have more expectations of them? am i always my best self in relationships and when are those times that i cannot really be authentic or kind in relationships? several questions many of us ask ourselves.

several years ago just before me and a very close friend were both on the brink of surgeries we  got into a deep conflict that created a rift between us for a very long time. i remember feeling very hurt by her and i talked of the experience to another common friend. i had forgotten that i had spoken about it at all and cannot remember what i said but i probably spoke from an angry and hurt place and my words must have been unpleasant. this week in a conversation with the friend who i had been in conflict with i learnt  that though the common friend asked her about this conflict she understood even then that i had spoken in pain and she herself did not say anything at all about me or the conflict. she was a better friend to me then than i knew how to be and she modelled to me a quality i would like to see in myself as a friend. she gave me this gift then and this week i think this memory was given to me at a time when i am in the midst of another conflict with a friend to help me perhaps be the best i can be?

i had been trying to connect with a friend all week and felt her evading it. finally when she agreed to meet me i wasn't even sure i wanted to, so hurt i was with the double signals she had given me this week and for a while before. but i wanted to ask her about it and so we met. it was hard to do but i brought it up and she said it was true and that she felt meeting me was heavy and draining and she would like to not meet me anymore. i was stunned for several reasons - but i tried to listen to her experience. she said i had been very negative for a while and while i accepted some of it as true - thinking back to this year with the loss of two loved pets, one aborted move, a feeling of being betrayed and cheated by the agent, anxiety about my daughter who was in a foreign country with a severe kidney infection, worry about my mother who suffered from several chronic pains and who was also depressed because recovery was slow and my own chronic and confusing back injury  - i also  actually knew that i been feeling a fair amount of optimism for several months. as i listened there came a point when she spoke of me being negative during a time when i knew i had been feeling the happiest i had felt in a while - i knew then that what she said was not all just about me but came partly from her own processes. but i could also see that she felt burdened by what she thought was my negativity. i walked away giving her the space from me she needed and giving myself the time to let my pain cool.

i struggled with my hurt and anger. i struggled with the worry i felt for her. i struggled with wanting to just tell her off and with holding back. i struggled with the choked feelings and memories. i struggled with her weaknesses and my own and mostly i struggled with integrating the memory of my other friend who who had understood that my actions came from pain then and i tried to act from my best self now. i really struggled with being a good friend to her as my friend had been to me those many years ago. but in the end i just walked away.

even as i thought long about the friendship and felt tears filling my eyes in the dark when i was just falling asleep. i also thought long about why now? why had i not brought this up earlier during all the time i had been feeling that something was wrong and disconnected between us.

the years events had left me drained too and i was not really myself for a while. i know that the beginning of this year had taken away from me the ability to trust my instincts and act authentically. somewhere in the end of august as i was completely drenched in an unexpected rain shower, just as i was walking back from a painful session with my physiotherapist, the day before my birthday, i felt the shock of thunder in my body. the relentless thundering of the demolition next door rattled and shook the very flesh from my bones and finally after the fall in bombay where i re-injured a back that i felt  was on it's way to healing i felt more fragile than ever. i felt pruned down to my last resources but it  also brought me to my obscured core again. and then the time with my mother, sister and some loved friends who found a way to spend time with me, during my short mostly housebound visit, revitalised the blood in my spirit veins. i came back finally able to trust my instincts and speak from them again.

i am still struggling with being a good friend. but now in half an hour i can leave for the airport and hug my daughter again. she returns today and yesterday afternoon right on time to really enjoy this week with her i finished the last scene in my second draft and sent it off to my two readers, vandana and tamara, who have given me the gift of their time, attention and feedback. i cannot enough express my gratitude. my first writing effort, my first readers. thank you both. an unexpected third reader also emerged who knows me so well and pointed to me how the book expressed parts of me. thank you monica. 

this has been one of the hardest posts i have written. perhaps because i am still in the middle of it all. i think i am a good or a bad friend depending on many factors. i think what i value in a friend is what i value in myself. i think i want to be a better person and friend. i think this year of the snake has peeled off yet another layer of my skin.

loss

i should really be finishing up the last scenes on the second draft of my novel. i might have said this before - this second draft probably is more like what an experienced writers first one would be. but thats ok. we all have to start someplace. and my two readers have given me amazing feedback which i hope i can integrate and have a much better third draft. i have a goal of finishing this draft before shibble arrives on sunday and with only 8 scenes to go i can see that happening. and once she comes there is much work to do together on a goal be both share.

but on this windy, thundery day i cannot really focus on that. so i am dropping out of my schedule and taking time to stare. the grey sky i see through the rain-spotted window pane suits me today. it allows my pensive mood in a way a sunny day would not. I am sad. we in our iogkf singapore dojo said farewell to our sensei last evening. 

i met sensei five years ago when i moved here. in the beginning the only constant and structure in my life here was the dojo. my growth path in karate was shaped a lot by the two sensei's in this singy dojo. it is a big loss. 

loss sweeps in change, sometimes before we are ready for it. it is a time to really gather the self, face those fears and insecurities and hopefully take a leap into the future. we have an amazing group of students committed in different ways to learning goju. there are many resources within the group to tap into. i am excited to see what will develop. but sometimes i also get nervous.

i guess for me it is time to step more fully into my authentic self. i am who i am and if i have the courage to just be with all my weaknesses and gaps in knowledge - i must trust that things around me will fall into place. the fears themselves will become a reason to dig deeper and find my own way through. the supports i need will manifest. the inner growth will continue and what i have learnt, about karate and about life, will form within me and will find a way to express itself and be useful to others. 

ultimately each step takes me to the naked core. the me without masks. i feel like standing open armed,  under the falling rain and inviting in new life. 

a short post after a short trip to what is and is not home

i returned from bombay yesterday. a very short - just a week - trip.

entry into bombay was hard for me this time. very hard. i couldn't get it out of my head that a young woman had been gang raped in a city i had felt safe in until then. on my way home from the airport my eyes constantly scanned the people along the roads. whenever i saw a group of men in the age group the rapists were i wondered what they were doing hanging around on the streets. it took me a few days to feel connected to the city again and want to call it home.

i returned with an increasing sense that i don't know where on earth home is for me.

it is bombay and it is not.

it is singapore and it is not.

increasingly i feel more at home in the novel i am writing. the second draft is less skeletal than the first but still it feels more like bare bones with parts of skin. no musculature or organs yet. some veins pulsing with blood but the heart that pumps it through still a bit ghostly.

i feel like i am searching for that spot on earth where my sacred tree is. it is tattooed on my left upper arm. it emerged in the body symptom work with the repeated back injury. but it is also lost to me. like laxmi seems to have lost her owl and parvati her tiger. an idea for a story emerges softly. a whisper of that which is missing in the novel circles my ears in a gentle breeze and moves on.

there is also a lightening bolt tattooed on that arm. the bringer of rain and life. may we all find what we seek. may we also be able to see what we find instead and love it. 

wizpert? and other bites

Its raining in cold, grey, relentless sheets. Visibility is impaired. But today I find it relaxing. I don't have to get out till later in the day when hopefully the rain will have spent itself. Right now the wind is howling, a dull low continuous sound with an occasional high pitched wail. I imagine I am in a tower surrounded by lapping waves, alone with the wind and rain. That feels good.

About two weeks ago I got an email from, Micheal W., founder of something called wizpert. This is how Micheal described wizpert -

'our platform, called Wizpert, is a fast growing community of experts, where users seek advice and coaching on an array of topics, including relationships, friendships, parenting, social media and more.'

The email invited me to join the community of experts based on my blog posts. I was flattered that my blog posts seem to contain some knowledge that made me an expert on something but I was also skeptical. Random ramblings cannot possibly give anyone the sense that I am an expert at anything. Besides, the word expert itself is something I have reactions to. Anyway I went ahead and checked out the link and it seemed to be an interesting idea on some levels and disturbed me on others. 

I liked that idea of a community that was linked through cyberspace that one could go to to find someone to talk to. I didn't like the idea that there would be experts that might advice the person on their issues. I don't believe in advice, especially when offered to a stranger that I might have talked/listened to for few minutes or even an hour. On the other hand I do believe that open conversations that explore a persons problem can lead them to finding temporary relief from the worst turbulence of the problem and so putting them in a space to think clearly. I believe that such exploration then can lead a person to find their own solutions. I loved the thought of spontaneous chats with people from different parts of the world. When people talk about their problems they are more open about themselves and the conversation is more than just surface deep. That was exciting. But the idea of being approached as an expert did not really make sense. 

Maybe its a problem with me owning my own inner expert. In any case I did not follow through with it but yet the idea does have some appeal for me and floats on the edges of my thoughts.

The winds howling has changed as I have been writing. Its more urgent, wilder, faster. I like the sound.

I am grappling with finding the heart of my story yet. Part of me does not want to write till I find it and another wants to keep going and trusts that the process will lead me to it. Part of me is overwhelmed today with the idea of writing a book and wonders why I did not start with short stories. They are quicker, you can finish one and send it out and keep going. But a long story is my basic form. Part of me is scared that I will never get it right. While another just wants to tell a story. I just like telling stories and have a person want to know 'and then what happened?'

Many other things are floating around today. Few that are making me sad.  Somethings that make me question my path. An email conversation that made me happy. Another incident that made me hope. Glimmers of that path hidden under the sheets of rain. Its a good day to be alive.

mostly tangled wires

its very frustrating when you have something to say but the words just don't fall together in lines that make sense. I had a sort of mini eureka moment this morning.

Some people have eureka moments in the shower. I often have mine on the treadmill. I am not a runner. I only run so I have good stamina to do karate. Just 30 minutes, nice and easy. Like many people do, I too used to prefer running outdoors but rain drove me into the gym one morning and I found I loved the treadmill. If I am outdoors my attention is very outward focused - making sure I don't trip or bump into someone. But, when I run indoors I can have an inward attention and chaotic things in my head begin to form intelligent patterns, restless emotions run with me and are spent and sometimes I just follow my breath and it becomes a moving meditation.

This morning I was thinking of my dream from last night, an email I had read in the morning from a friend who is helping me by giving me feedback on my fiction draft and a couple of things a young Chinese-American writer said about his own writing that resonated with me. 

On weds I went to a session organised by READ at the NLB and listened to Ken Liu talking mostly about his short story 'The Paper Menagerie'. Two of the things he said remained long with me. He said he wrote the story to express something that he felt was missing from the experience of stories out there and he advised asian writers trying to write fantasy, a market hard to break into for non-anglo writers, to write the story they can write and not write to a market. I feel my own motivation for writing is similar - i write to the gaps in my world and I write stories that are mine to tell. Ken Lui's story are very much his, they are like moving soul breath. But as I thought more I felt a bit depressed. I felt that somewhere I had lost touch with the heart of my story and I needed to step a bit out of it to find it. Strange that, to step away from something to find the essence of it? or perhaps not that strange.

I woke remembering a dream. 

'i was telling a friend of mine that I was ready to start playing publicly (in the dream i played a stringed instrument - it wasn't a sitar which i used to study, nor a guitar or any i am familiar with). so he set me up to meet an agent. i got cold feet and felt i wasn't ready. i was still learning the skills and he would know that i was a 'fake'. so i didn't take my instrument with me in case he wanted to hear. i saw he was a young man i vaguely knew and he said 'i was hoping that it was you - the woman with the good voice.' i felt flattered and confused. i played an instrument not sang.'

And then I read the email from my friend who among other things encouraged me to bring my own unique voice into the writing. 

And here is where the words are still not expressing what I want to say.

I went to the gym confused about why I felt more raw about sharing my fantasy story, something I had made up, than I had sharing my memory, something so deeply personal. While running - I also realised that I had more trouble handling criticism of 'what I did' but could easily shrug off criticism about 'who I was.' 

Hmm, if I can handle criticism of 'who I am' then I must have a strong core? Actually I do believe in 'who i am' even when paradoxically I have forgotten 'who I am' for I genuinely believe that forgetting and re-discovering is the core of 'who I am' anyway. That's what the young agent from my dream liked I think. And 'what I do', I often feel inadequate. I question my own skills and when someone is critical I can feel very vulnerable and even defensive. Yet, If someone attacks me at my core I am ok. 

If I am comfortable with 'who I am' then why shouldn't I be ok with 'what I do'? However unformed or bad it maybe? New learning, new skills take time to perfect and do need critical self-analysis and feedback to improve. While 'who I am' is perfect. That's what so many spiritual traditions also say - we are all perfect just the way we are.

It sort of makes sense and it's sort of still like dangling wires waiting to connect. I need to get back on the treadmill.

writhing fury

its not an easy night to fall asleep on. turmoiled and trying desperately to locate some 'news' or some blog that helps me not fall off the edge into something insane. i find nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing that can explain this. my head, my mind, my body, my soul threaten to slip into the numb abyss. i don't want to feel the feelings i am. i cannot contain them. an hard anger grows in my chest. it will explode me from the core outwards twisting my flesh apart.

even though we all saw it coming i think many of us are in shock about the verdict on the juvenile in the delhi gang rape last year. they sentenced a violent 17 year old rapist to three years in a juvenile home with the possibility of shortening the sentence with review of good behaviour. another one slips through the cracks and laughs at us - the women of india. 

the current news is not detailing this - but as far as i remember he turned 18 in july this year. i remember reading that according to some archaic law he would be tried as a juvenile and that he was likely to serve no time at all more than that he had already served while waiting for the sentencing because once a 'child' in a juvenile reform centre turns 18 he cannot be held in the centre anymore. and he cannot be tried again for the same crime. but they are not saying all this today and i wonder why.

my heart goes out to the parents of the victim. more than the accused they have been in an inner prison of desperate grief, of waiting and waiting for some justice and what they get is this. they have been given a far harsher sentence than he has been - for doing nothing else but giving birth to a girl. for being the parents of a young woman who wanted to make a better future for herself. they were made to wait endlessly for something that just poured boiling oil over their pain and shackled them into endless agony. he ripped their daughters intestines out. this verdict ripped their hearts out. 

at least its ripped mine out. 

child right groups have asked for restraint over the verdict. they have said that our system has failed these children. that maybe so -  but the system has failed women even more and that needs to be corrected too. 

this is just the beginning. another juvenile rapist has already emerged in bombay. more will surely follow. 

pre birthday mood

two days to go for my birthday. this year it promises to be a very low key day. i can live with that. i have had three years of amazing birthdays. a surprise party on my fiftieth and then two more with shibble being around after years of her being away at school or university. one year she baked me cupcakes and the celebration lasted the entire weekend. that was my fifty-first. the next she flew in the night before from innsbruck and we had a day wandering and just doing what came spontaneously. it was a monday and deepak had to work. but we ended up in the paragon ps cafe at 5pm with the dark chocolate cake and the ginger pudding shared between the three of us. that was the fifty-second. it was just the right day i wanted for my birthday.

this year i am committed to some important work during the day and will be in the dojo in the evening. deepak and i will have a late b'day dinner i guess but shibi is still away and deepak too flies away early the next day. leaving me to spend most of my b'day week alone.

most times i love being alone. but this year i am not really wanting it. i feel sad in a low key kind of way. a way where i don't really protest it but nor do i forget it. perhaps other things are adding to that.

since the day itself is going to be very busy i am taking some time today to reflect on what i feel and to think about the last twelve months.

its been a year of upheava but i don't have much in terms of external change to show for it. externally it seems i am just where i was last year. that itself is interesting.

internally where people can't see i am a completely different person. and that i am happy about.

i still can't get italy out of my mind. it creeps in, i feel a squeeze in my heart and a dizziness of longing in my head. i want to be there. but over the last two weeks i have found my rhythm again - at least in writing and my volunteering. but the demoliton next door has been driving up my blood pressure and making my insides vibrate to the point where i close my eyes and cannot function anymore. i need to be home to write for i cannot lug my laptop, my files and index cards around all the time as i tackle my second draft.

and then my back. its gone back to high pain and i have had to spend time with my physio and cut down on training. that really depresses me and i haven't found my training rhythm at all yet.

today i did a very brave thing and sent out the first scenes of the second draft of my fantasy novel to two friends. my hands shook as i hit send. i am now googling  how many drafts  it takes to write a book and am relieved that many have said from 4 -13. i just don't want to write any book but the book that will tell the story my mind and heart want to tell. i want to write in a way that will reduce the gap of what i see in my mind and what i can express in words. for a first time fiction writer i feel i will probably need 6-7 drafts. i don't want to be stuck waiting till i get the perfect draft and never sending my book out to the world but i also want to write it well. i want to invite people into the world i create by good writing.

or i want to find out that words are not my medium of expression - not for a published book anyway - and so move on. let's see what happens.

i am thinking a lot about the rape last week in bombay of a young photojournalist. i am admiring how she went straight to the hospital despite being told by the rapists that they had shot pictures of her and that they would shame her by putting them on the internet if she reported the crime. i am admiring very much how she said, 'this is not the end of life.' this coming from a woman in a country where rape is a woman's shame and the end of a life worth living is incredible. she must have a great family i think. one of the rapists too obviously has a very supportive family. as soon as he was arrested his grandmother came forward with a birth certificate saying he was a minor. honestly i feel that if i could i would put his grandmother in jail too for doing this. the delhi rape trial has gone on too long and i think given adult rapists the feeling that they can get away with it and juveniles the certainty that they will.

on friday after i had read the news and despaired i waited at the bus stop in the afternoon to take a bus to the physiotherapist. two indian men were waiting there too. a strange thing happened to me. my hands curled into fists and my elbows tensed ready to become weapons. don't invade my private space, i thought or i will kill you. my eyes looked straight ahead but i watched them from the corners of my vision. one came close and my knees dropped ready to spring if needed. they probably were just 'normal', decent men. but i saw them as would be rapists.

i feel so hopeless as a woman in india. i am disgusted, angry, frustrated, in tears and much more. but somehow the spirit of this young woman gives me hope that change will come to my land. hoping that bombay handles it differently than delhi did.

glad that it is sunday and the demolition crew have the day off.

Desperately missing...

Ten days after returning from Italy my mind still goes back to it and I yearn to be back. Its been a really busy coming back. After the year beginning in a way where I barely managed to get much accomplished I feel an urgency to get things done and its going mostly ok. I am working on the second draft of my fantasy novel and am determined to get it done before my daughter returns from her last term in Innsbruck. Three people have read the first layer of the memory I finished before I left for Italy and they all felt themselves drawn into the story, wanting to read on and know what happened next. It was so scary sending out such a raw memory but their response has been reassuring. Despite seeing the worst of me in the memory they seem to still like me - and thats really a wonderful feeling. Hoping to interact with one or two of them more and move into the next layer. 

In my first week of work I pushed the pace and moved. Later I analysed the hours I spent doing different things and figured what I need to change. Me - a spontaneous worker seems to be actually making schedules and wanting to reach goals. 

But still everyday I wake up thinking that I wish I was back on that holiday. 

Some of the things I miss 

• Having 21 uninterrupted days with Deepak. Its been so long since we were stuck together like we were there. I actually had apprehensions before we left about it. I am so used to being alone and enjoying it and I wondered if we would fight everyday. But it was a dream being together - easy to adjust and enjoy our differing needs. Of course we had arguments and expectations but but, but, but... they were few and minor. Most moments were pure bliss.
• I miss the five days of training in Catania. The anticipation and excitement. The dread of not making it through sessions, not following the fast paced Sensei's, not being good enough, not having anyone to talk to - and then finding that all those fears were nuts. The breakfasts alone where I ate carefully thinking of the four hours of training. The high after each day and the bus ride back, I was the first to be dropped off. Freezing granitas from the little shop just outside the lane to our little hotel - which had to be gulped down as they melted so fast in the burning heat. Our large room with a sunny balcony where I could dry out my keiko gi. Transcribing the sessions the best i could and of course having Deepak in the room waiting for me. Resting my back for a couple of hours and then the exploring walks, wonderful Sicilian pasta and wine dinners.   Slowing down. Talking and just being. I miss the bus driver. His warm, chubby face that knew me after the second day. 
• I miss how when I asked how far something was and I always was told five minutes or right around here when it actually was about twenty minutes away. I miss - when I and the travel agency had different ideas on when I should be picked up for the drop off at the airport - how the man agreed to my time so easily 'You want 12:45, ok'. He made a pencil mark on his list but later that day a note was slipped under my door. 'Pick up time - 12:15'.  He just did it his way. We laughed and later found how glad we were for that extra half hour at Catania airport. 
• I miss the traffic and the lack of rules or the not following of them.
• I miss, even, the crazy, stressful chaos at Catania airport and the immense pleasure of making our flight.
• I miss Florence. I miss Florence. I miss Florence. Yes, that requires another post. But every corner a wonderful surprise and so much life - past, present and I imagine future.
• I miss our spontaneous decisions on where to go and what to do and Deepak and my argument over whether to get a drink at Piazza Repubblica or find a little cafe in some forgotten lane. He won out and we had that drink there. I grouched at first but ended up having that moment etched into my memory, there to retrieve whenever I want. And of course I drank both his and my drink and was tipsy for the rest of the evening.
• I miss the sad look on the waiters faces when I could not finish my meal. Their asking did I not like it and the smile of relief when I said it was great but I was too full.
• I miss the gasping surprise of seeing David in the Academia, Venus's birth in the Uffizi, the Mercury bronze in the Bargello, the seemingly forgotten contorted face with green moss growing out of its mouth at Buboli gardens. I miss the awe I felt every time i saw the Duomo even though we lived right round the corner and every path we took passed it. I miss the bells and even more the doors.
• I miss deciding between getting a gelato or a granita. I miss the flavours I sampled and even more the flavors I could not.
• I miss the overwhelming emotions I felt as I sat with the last supper and the crucification on the other wall - which stayed with me deep into the next morning.
• I miss Villa Sostaga, the view, the absolute silence, the long, long dinner overlooking the lake so far down. The day turning to night as we ate and the arrangement of lights on the other side of the lake. I miss wondering what they saw when they looked to our side. I miss  the cute dog from Vienna at the next table and how he did not like Romeo the house dog who walked around making sure all was going as well as it could. I miss the plump waitress's smile and sad goodbye.
• I miss seeing Shibble and walking the streets of Innsbruck after 30 years. The hasty day in Salzburg spent lazily wandering through the unknown city.
• I miss Sirmione, and hotel Pace - right on the lake. Lazing on the jetty for hours. Slowing down, slowing down and then slowing down more. That one day that held a thousand in it.

Rushed rambly, rambly post. Hertz in Milan still has to be dealt with and I wish I had handled that experience better but, but, but... that just added balance and richness to an almost perfect holiday that I can, paradoxically, miss even more because it was not perfect.

The holiday and Italy were fantastic. But what I really want to do as I miss them is find the essence, the shape, the form of that holiday and retain it here in my days in Singy. Lets see where that desire goes.

Back Home

I returned home on National day. Entry at Changi reminded me how much I am spoiled by singaporean efficiency. Airports in Italy were chaotic and though I love chaos and desperately miss it sometimes here in Singy; at airports I like the reliable order that Changi provides. I know how much time I will take to check in, get through immigration, walk to my gate and clear security. Italian airports on the other hand were unpredictable and nightmarish. 

Catania particularly was a rude shock. The check in line snaked and snaked like an endless serpent whose the mouth had lost awareness of its tail. People tried to break lines and sneak in and though there were supposed to be eight counters open only two were manned. The line moved as slowly as a snail out on a leisurely, sunday stroll. We took 65 mins to get to the counter and the harried check in person frowned as she dealt with us and was irritated when we asked her the way to security. We had a half hour before our gate closed. 

The security line was even longer and we kept glancing at the time as the line crept and curled, stopped suddenly for minutes and then moved a foot or two. We made it to the flight only to find somebody had occupied our seats!

Luckily the rest of our travel was on the road or rail track and we had only to be at one other airport on our last flight back. Malpensa Milano. We expected that to be a breeze since we were flying SQ and Deepak had managed to upgrade us to business. But a bizzare experience awaited us. 

When we arrived at the check-in counter there were only two people in the line before us but each was taking an unusual amount of time to check in. We looked at each other wondering why but we had plenty of time. The airport was buzzing and I could feel the stress in the air but maybe it was just my own.

Our turn. She smiles and begins clicking on her keypad. A frown appears on her face and puzzled she asks, 'Did you fly in on the 20th on SQ?'

'Yes.'

'Did you change the ticket?'

'Only to upgrade.' Deepak replies.

'What's the problem?' I ask.

'There is a sequencing problem. The system shows you did not use the first ticket and so it's not allowing me to use the second,' she says clicking away on the keypad and talking to her colleagues in Italian. They smile amused. I love the way Italians seem to deal with things that don't go as they are supposed to. With unworried, knowing smiles.

'Did you really fly in on the 21st?' she asks again.

'Here we are.' Deepak says still smiling.

'Check the immigration stamp.' I reply.

She turns the pages to the visa page and looks up, 'Where is it?'

Shocked we look to see no stamp. I try to pull the passport out of her hand but she holds on. Deepak gently says, 'Can I look for it?'

She hands over the passport and he is shocked to see no stamp. Its his passport and he turns the pages but he's travelled so much that the pages are full of stamps and he can't find the stamp. Then he asks for my less stamped one and all three of us are relieved when he finds it.

She calls over the supervisor who seems to not be able to focus on one issue since many problems are coming up. She comes to us and wanders away. Finally when there are 40 mins left on the clock she comes over again and apologises. The supervisor does not have any success trying to resolve the issue either and calls the Milan SQ office. She informs us that the system shows we checked in at Singy but instead of it then showing flown it shows notification. We disappeared according to the system after check-in. 'We teleported,' I say, but without any hint of a smile.

Many minutes pass slowly. The supervisor shrugs helplessly when my husband asks if we will make the flight. Stress levels rising in him too now. 'Our visa expires today,' I say. Fantasies of being led away to some strange holding cell and classified as illegal come in.

'Did you call Singapore? Somebody is working on it in Singapore it seems,' the supervisor says to us looking perplexed. Finally they create a new ticket for us and hand over the boarding passes and invitation to use the lounge and tell us to go to the fast track security. We run with the boarding passes and passports but see no security signs in the direction she pointed us towards. Finally i ask a security officer where it is. He points us to an escalator going downwards where a sweet man who notices my stressed out expression soothes me and passes us through in seconds. Deepak who never drinks says, 'I need a drink today.'

Phew! Yes, Changi has spoiled me.

Three days back now and we have tackled the mounds of laundry of the trip, looked and re-looked at pictures of the wonderful holiday and eaten the much missed east asian food. Tomorrow Deepak returns to the office and I am contemplating how and where to start on my work.

I draw up a sort of schedule but the number of hours I want to work per week on the several things that call to me far exceed the number of hours I can work and still retain sanity. I guess i will find my balance during the week.

end of the experiment

it's been a busy two weeks and i've had to narrow my focus hugely to just get what i wanted done. writing blog posts has fallen to the wayside. there just has been not enough time. initially i felt a huge pressure to continue writing and got headaches stressing when days passed by and no post got written. but later i felt free to allow myself to not have one more self-chosen activity pressurising me. i began thinking of the deadlines i set just for myself and how they can sometimes feel like a noose and sometimes as necessary discipline to me a person who does not work full time and so has few external deadlines and is danger of getting nothing done without inner ones.

what is the balance between following my inner flow each day and meeting goals that i set? i continue to struggle with that answer. why is there sometimes a need in me to stick to self imposed agendas and structures and at the same time hate these same structures and want to smash them to bits? is it a resistance to just following the day or is it a commitment to a goal?

some times in my life i seem to have found the balance between spontaneity and discipline but this time i moved strongly towards pushing myself to finish two writing projects that i am doing for no other reason than i want to. there is a satisfaction in doing that as well as the question, why am i doing them when they feel so hard? my husband quieted this question raging up in me by simply saying 'because you are meeting some inner need.'

i wonder though if this would be seen by some as one of those things that is a waste of time? even though i have spent about four or more focused hours a day, even on weekends, to complete this task there is nothing to show to the outside world. when i check in i feel happy that i did it.

one project - the bf memory - led me to connect and see events from a time that was turbulent. it connected me to my ability to rise up through intense instability. it showed me both my pull towards death and my life instinct and how that choice is a daily struggle for a person feeling desolate. it made me cry and made me more compassionate. each day it was hard to sink into that memory and at times i procrastinated and developed headaches. memory is a funny thing, what the mind stores in invisible planets in unseen galaxies and offers up when one asks for it is as vast as the universe that our mere senses cannot fathom. the discipline that i pushed myself through to complete it led me to reclaim lost bits of myself. 

the other project - writing notes to revise my fantasy novel scenes - required me using a different set of skills and discipline. world building, creating nuances in character, analysing and putting together the flow of imaginary events. what joy it was to do that. i struggled mostly with the sense that writing to me is process and once i know the end i want to move on to something new. to stay with what is already known, to and see it widen and express it externally was not easy.

today is the end of this self set endeavour. only the time line for the novel is left to sketch. my body and mind have been so engrossed in these tasks that i am finding it hard to pull out. i feel an unnerving feeling of hollowness and separation. a pain, a space that's suddenly emptied. there is fear and excitement about what will rush in to fill it. though i have a wonderful karate retreat and a holiday to look forward to i am finding it hard to change inner tracks and move towards it fully. why i wonder!

in some ways it could be said that the blog post experiment failed. i wrote only about half the days of the month. in another way it was just the way it should be. everyone, and even parts of me, will evaluate it differently. though for the most part i got out of it what i needed. 

day 20

Its another gorgeous, clear day here. Makes me smile and prance. 

Its been a long tiring week which has swept in another imminent change. This week our Sensei told us that he would be leaving Singapore later this year. This heavy news shocked me. This is the third Sensei I will be losing in the five years that I have been in Singapore. But this time it brings with it more change than the previous two times. This time it leaves me and the other black belt in our dojo to continue the iogkf tradition here.

In all the things I have wanted to do in my life, teaching karate was never one of them. I have many friends who would like to have their own dojo's some day but it has never been something I have wanted to take responsibility for. I knew karate would always be a part of my life but it was one of those things that I was content to be an eternal student of. Honestly, I never felt that I would  ever learn enough in this lifetime to make me capable of teaching it some day. There are huge fears to step into this role. So, this change is not only external but a change that I have have to work from within.

Though I am stunned by this change some part of me remains unsurprised. Since I had the first dream that called me to karate in 2003 it has always brought change and deep insight into my life. Even though its unfolded slowly at the edges of everything else I do it has become a way of life. Something that is not just about fitness or self defence but a path of psychological and spiritual growth. With every breath and movement it brings me deeply into the present moment like meditation has never quite done. It also challenges me and forces me to expand the boundaries of what I can do and be. Perhaps it is time to try to impart what I have learnt? But it is hard to embrace this identity - its way outside my comfort zone. 

The word Sensei can be translated as 'one who has gone before.' Implying someone whose teaching comes from the wisdom of experience. There is much that I have learnt from each Sensei I have encountered, both about karate and about the qualities that I would want to embody as a human being. I have been blessed for being called to this deep tradition with an abundance of great teachers that have enriched me. Such a gift needs to be passed along. 

Fortunately this change is still in some distance away and I can allow it to stew in the background. Today I grapple with the realisation that it's only twelve more days before I leave. I have much to get done if I want to leave feeling light and empty to fully enjoy the trip. 

day 17

As I write and remember I am filled with a longing for that time - a time, a feeling, a sensation, a fullness that feels lost to me here in this time and space. The terrible sweet pain of loss sweeps through me. But time has flowed on and to yearn for that time is like feeling my heart squeezed and squeezed till every last drop of blood trickles out.

The colour of that time was a dazzling pulsating purple that slowly turned into a vibrant white. Everything has a season of flowering and of returning to rest. Wintertime. A time of retreat. Stark beauty and naked truth.

And the truth is that I am floundering and separated from my inner self. That is the pain I feel. That is the longing.

Once the journey to the inner self was made through wanting to know the truth of deep suffering. Now the journey is made to know the disconnection from truth that comfort and soft living creates.

Yesterday I boarded a bus and then wandered through empty, windblown streets. The leaves twirled around touching my sandalled feet.  I felt disconnected both from the outside and from myself and I walked with that feeling allowing it just to be. For some reason I noticed the absence of dogs and their long panting tongues. The sun was hot and dry and my head spun with dehydration. I don't know what happened but at one point my feet turned homewards and I knew that it was ok. I had been feeling that I had moved very far from my Source but suddenly I knew it was right next to me separated by just a thin Veil. A Veil so thin that I could catch glimpses of what it hid. I felt comforted. My steps quickened as I neared home and inside I slaked my thirst with cool water that returned me to life.

The Veil is still there but I can glimpse Home through it. I do have a journey to make to learn what I need to do to pull it away, but I know that I am already there too. This duality is strange.

The dusty travels of the spirit and soul are sometimes hard to capture.

day 16

I am confused today. Yesterday I felt I was finally hitting my stride - being able to get my work done and also writing up a storm - but something felt hollow. Normally when I finally find my rhythm I feel joyous and energetic. But I am feeling tired and lacklustre which is puzzling. I have enjoyed delving into those foggy times in my past and discovering all kinds of forgotten gems there. Also yesterday I finally re-read my fantasy novel draft and found it quite exciting and I am now looking forward to working on the revision.

I should be happy.

Yet, today I woke not really looking forward to the day. Nevertheless I decided to plunge into exploring my memories. I am now writing about the time when things began to shift and some kind of coherence began to emerge in my life after about four or five years of turbulence. That was also the most directionless time in my life. I was lost and had no clue what my life purpose was. Instead of scrambling desperately to find my path, as I realise I am doing today, I had decided on a time of 'low doing'. Even though I was living with my family I decded to not speak too much and only eat one meal a day and spend a lot of my day in quiet contemplation. For about three months all I did was  meditate, play music and read a bit. 

As I wrote I connected back to the feeling that it was a time when I felt the divine most strongly in my life. Something bigger than me guided my apparently empty days that were actually so full. I don't know how but suddenly I found the next few months magically charted out for me. I watched shocked as everything I didn't even know I wanted manifested in my life. A lot of people, many of them strangers, told me then that I had a lot of personal power. 

Writing about that time is confusing me as I am so far from it in my mental space right now. I have so much to do and I when I find I am running short of time the first thing that I sacrifice is my meditation and my quiet time. I don't know why I had forgotten that this is what really sustains me through everything. I don't know why I had begun to tell myself, 'first get work done and then meditate.' I don't know why some part of me had even begun to think that it is a waste of time. 

Whew! glad I woke up. Sometimes something seeps in so slowly that you don't even know that the intuitive wise part of you is in a deep slumber. Sometimes you need to be reminded over and over again  and in different ways to wake up.

This morning I wrote about a session I did with a therapist in Portland where I felt my fathers spirit with me. He said to me, 'Don't be afraid to waste your life.' Every time I remember these words I am surprised. 

Don't be afraid to waste my life. I think I am going to contemplate this for the next hour or two and throw my schedule out of the window. 

What do you think is a 'waste of life'? Is it really?

day 15

I am in a sort of dry state where writing is concerned. I had been blank for several days. Staring at the empty screen or page and not being able to write. Or i would force myself to write and be upset with the dribble that emerged. Something changed yesterday and now I am bombarded with scattered strands of intense thought and I get a terrible headache when I try to pull them together and write. Its painful. Its frustrating. I want to slam down my laptop screen and run away. 

Intimacy has been on my mind, specifically emotional intimacy. The sharing of deep feeling, unspeakable thoughts and vulnerability. Sharing your most secret desires and emotions. I need intimacy in my life and sadly it's one thing that's been really hard to find here in Singapore. When emotional intimacy is not possible I find I tend to withdraw into myself, into solitude or intimacy with myself. But I need both.

When I was young I found myself expressing feelings that my mother often told me were best kept to myself. I craved understanding at a very deep level. She felt as a woman in a patriarchal culture I was better off giving up this need. Perhaps she was speaking from her own experience and disappointment for as I grew I could see she was much like me. My father passed on when I was ten and after his leaving I felt very alone. My father I felt lived his life deeply and surrounded himself with music, sport, art and many friendships. He was very different from the other adults in my extended family and was perhaps a role model for my adult self. 

In the absence of relationships that nurtured intimacy I think I buried that need and was very much a loner as a child living in imaginary worlds where at least I could know myself deeply. I created characters in my head that acted out different aspects of myself. As most of us do I sought intimacy in my romantic relationships as I grew but whereas physical intimacy was easy to find emotional intimacy eluded me and I was left feeling an emptiness. I didn't give up though and often found myself in conflict as neither me nor my partner knew how to both genuinely share ourselves or to receive that sharing in an open non-judgmental way. I struggled with trying to express a unformed need that I had but really did not know how to flesh out and describe.

I think the first truly intimate relationships I had were with a therapist and my co-students in a therapy course back in 1995. Though the course ended in disaster I touched then what I was seeking and it made my search easier both on the outside and within the bounds of myself. I also realised how  intimacy with myself was the pre-requisite for intimacy in relationships. As my self-knowing and my ability to talk about what I was feeling expanded I also found very close relationships that endured the demands of this need. Certain environments encourage such knowing and expression. There are safe places to explore this need but I wanted more and I searched for something within me that was a safe container and would allow such expression in any space that I was in. Sometimes people thought me odd but for long I was happy as I followed this need. When many other things were going wrong externally this brought richness and wholeness to my life.

Truly intense emotions are hard to stand, especially those termed as negative. Truly authentic relating in the here and now is even harder. Even those that crave it actually find it hard to stand when they are on the brink of a conflict with another that requires them to really explore themselves in order to resolve the tension in the relationship. It takes strength to stay at this point and plunge in. Most walk away.

I have found only one such relationship through my volunteer work here. In efforts to find more I enrolled in a course on counselling psychology believing that there would me others like me in that space. Unfortunately though I found friends I did not find deep authentic relating of the kind I was looking for. Disillusioned I did not pursue the second year to get my masters but walked away with only a diploma. When counsellors/therapists do not truly know themselves or share themselves with friends and try to work out their conflicted relationships I doubt their ability to form intimate therapeutic bonds that lead to deep therapy. Perhaps I am wrong and perhaps with the many dangers that close therapeutic relationships can lead to this is better or at least enough? From my perspective though this kind of therapy stays close to the surface, close to problem solving and advice and does not touch the roots of where change needs to happen.

I think for a while I numbed my need for authentic relating as I tried to adjust to this environment. For a while I drifted and the boiling frogs dream and the subsequent writing is pulling me back to who I need to be. Not sure where it will take me. This is not what i expected to write. This is not what was pressing on my mind but in some way I see that I have pulled together some of the scattered threads in my mind.

day 13

Last night I watched the double episode of Charmed from season 7 where the sisters agree to help the avatars to create 'Utopia' a world beyond the duality of good and evil. It's a world hard to imagine but the conceptualisation of it in that episode was a bit flawed I think. People's mindsets were changed and they were happy and did not feel difficult emotions and those that persisted in troubled states that led to conflict were eliminated by the avatars, the guardians of this created Utopia. Since grief and mourning had been eliminated those that disappeared were not missed much as they were said to have moved on to a better place.

I think the biggest flaw in this idea of Utopia was the perception of conflict as violent and something that needed to be eliminated to keep peace. Peace in the Chinese I-Ching is described by the hexagram of earth being above that of heaven and denotes a state where heaven is on earth. The opposite of peace in the I-Ching is not conflict but standstill where the two hexagrams are reversed and so heaven moves away from earth. The Utopia the avatars wanted was stagnant. It was built on repression and the loss of free will and even though it felt light and happy it was in its essence oppressive.

It troubles me that so often conflict and violence are used interchangeably by the media. Conflict simply is a sign that something needs to change. It is a call to transformation. Conflict need not turn violent but often does because we have not been taught the skills to resolve conflict within ourselves, in our relationships and in our world. We would not fear conflict and suppress it if we saw it as useful.  If anything is Utopia for me it would be a state where conflict and feeling were dealt with compassionately. 

Inner Utopia would perhaps be akin to a state of enlightenment. Daniel Brown and Jack Engler in Mindfulness Meditation write that enlightened practitioners are not without conflict they simply are less defensive in the awareness of inner conflict and their reactivity to it. Internally in all of us there are states and times of no conflict but I would not want that as a permanent state of being. Inner conflict no matter how difficult makes me feel alive. 

Yes, I have a positive bias towards conflict. It has been the driving force in me to change and grow. It's made my relationships richer and more dynamic. Of course my thinking might be flawed too and I look forward to it being challenged and finding ways to grow in a permanent conflict free state.

Today is day thirteen of my experiment. I have missed writing on four days so far and the quality of the writing has been inconsistent. I am sad and sometimes self-critica; about this but I am accepting that my body is more sensitive to the haze than many others and being compassionate towards myself, spacing out my activities and giving myself more downtime. Today is a sunday and my main conflict is wanting to stay quiet and write or doing something with my husband. 

day 10

Yesterday I had a restless fever. The days of haze seemed to have weakened my immune system and I felt ill. I was angry. I had enough low productivity days this year and I wanted to rush forward to meet the goals I had set for myself. I worked slowly through the morning but had a meeting later in the day that went on much longer than I had expected. I did not accomplish much and went to bed very frustrated. The worst part was waking up again this morning to disorientation and confusion. My body was still uneasy and that made my mind uncontrollably restless. Many of my inner critics were also around telling me that I did not know what I was doing and that I made all the wrong choices. For a while I tried to ignore them and get on with things but it was too tiring and finally I sat quietly with them.

Most days I deal with my inner critics quite well listening to and integrating the messages of those who have important lessons for me and telling the brutal ones to 'buzz off.' Most days they don't pull me down like  today.

I don't really know why they emerged with such force today. Over the last two days my ears have been particularly sensitive in picking up some critical comments directed at me and getting angry. I seem to have internalized those voices. In my writing I am hitting some barrier as memories are chaotic or inaccessible adding to the feeling that I don't know what I am doing. To give myself some respite from the inner voice my mind turns outwards.

Indonesia has made nine arrests related to the fires. These seem to be small time farmers who were clearing their land for planting. It is illegal in Indonesia to set these fires, punishable by a large fine and ten years in prison. But the large Palm Oil companies seem to have remained unscathed? The next days will be interesting - will those truly responsible for this environmental damage be named or will these farmers become scapegoats dissipating the rising heat among the three countries? The Indonesian President has made a public apology for the haze and come under criticism from many in his own country who think it is a sign of weakness. I disagree and feel that this apology will go a long way in setting a more co-operative tone in discussions. But i worry that in the interest of maintaining good neighbourly relationships this might be the end of the dispute. Token arrests while the real culprits get yet another year to continue their criminal burning? 

The Asean meeting is brought forward to mid-July. I am looking forward to following how this issue is handled. Hoping that there is a blend of some hard accountability and gentle co-operation. The world needs new models for conflict resolution and maybe Asia can model some.

Few years ago I had gone to a talk by someone from the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. He said while a lot of foreign NGO's have been allowed into Africa to help with the conflicts there the Asian countries have resisted outside help preferring to struggle to find solutions themselves. He believed that this would prolong the conflict but I think there is much wisdom in looking within the region itself to resolve things.

The outward gaze has reduced the intensity of the inner critical voices. Now I can separate them into useful and mean and deal with them.

week 2 - day 8

I gave myself the day off yesterday. I needed it. I had stayed up all sunday night working on something that falls under the category of one of those things that's not my story to reveal. I had a few hours of restless sleep monday morning and then woke feverish and struggled to complete some work I had assigned to myself on my BF-memoir. But extreme fatigue made me slow and despite wanting to not miss a day of writing a post I really could find nothing to say. I began writing about my feelings around the two arrests Indonesia had made related to the fires. But after a few sentences I let it go.

Today too something in me rebels against writing a post. This is an experiment and to observe what happens to me while trying to complete it is the main purpose of it for me.

There is a part of me that strongly resists structure. Not just structure imposed from the outside but any that I create too. As a child this got me into a lot of trouble as I was constantly breaking out of the structures in the classroom or in my rigid traditional patriarchal family. This part makes it difficult for me to stay in full time jobs for more than a few years. I need my days to be ever changing. But, there is another part that likes structure and feels I need it to really move forward. For most of my life I have worked part time or free lance and if I didn't have some structures to hold me I would faff away my days. There have been times in my life I have done just that.

About fifteen years ago I was studying Dhrupad, a form of traditional Indian music. I was learning to play the sitar from an amazing young rudra veena player. Because music was so difficult for me I didn't rebel against the structures he imposed. Each raag has many rules that any player must conform to. The rules are related to the way notes can be combined and over the first two years all a new student does is play rigidly composed forms. Yet once the rules of the raag are understood one can improvise and create just about anything sometimes even breaking out of the box created by the rules.

It was while learning Dhrupad that I really understood the power of pre-determined structure and the necessity of having your basics down. Learning basics needs discipline, something that was then not very well developed in me. Everything I had done before I began studying Dhrupad had come fairly easily to me. Not having a natural inclination for music I found it extremely difficult and without structure and discipline I would have just drowned and let it go. There were long phases in the learning process where I felt I had plateaued out. My teacher would be excited by these phases. He said I would suddenly make great leaps in learning after a plateau and he was right.

I would never be an amazing sitar player that much was clear from the beginning. Yet I am glad I pursued it seriously for a while. It activated parts in me that were dormant and also taught me how to persevere. Something that had served me well now. I think everyone should learn something that is hard for them instead of just doing things that come easily.

Right now the hardest thing I do is karate. I have even less of a natural inclination for it than I had for music. I am movement and co-ordintaion challenged and have to work harder than most others who come to the dojo. Small achievements in it mean more to me than progress in things I do easily.

I guess writing too is hard for me and I think I might give myself a day off sometimes during this experiment but for the most part I want to persevere in it even when i plateau out.

day 6

I woke to clear skies but an inexplicable heaviness. Sometimes moods just drift in without warning. I decided to take advantage of the lowered psi and had a good workout in the gym giving space to the heaviness to unfold in the background. Only now after a shower I am beginning to know more about it. Its like a sad sense of loss but yet I don't know where it comes from.

Earlier in the day I had wanted to write but a paralysis seemed to have come over me. Some parts of my life are not my story to tell and I had been thinking of them. I saw how being in an inner conflict about what to share and what to keep private freezes me up. But some parts of my experience are really somebody else's choice to disclose or not. As I was thinking about this I realised so much of my life has been affected by something outside, often something related to people close to me but sometimes related to large scale events that are not directly related to me, have completely changed the course of my life. Plans and hopes just disappearing due to some force outside me. I know some people whose life seems to be much more their own. They seem to be masters of their own destiny and can escape the influence of outside events and continue on their path relatively undeviated. 

That's not my life path for sure and for a while I wondered if I would want my life to be like theirs and what could I do to change it? How could I be more independent of things outside? As I was thinking this the boundaries of inside and outside blurred. What really is outside me? Are my closest family and friends outside? Are not large events that effect people on the other side of the world also not just inside in some way? 

I do have porous boundaries. As I have grown I seem to have allowed people and the world to affect me more and more. But isn't this what an interdependent existence is about? Why should it not be like this? I have grown more from allowing things to really affect me than by sitting quietly and meditating - no, not really both have had their place. The meditation had allowed me to be able to stay a bit detached even when I am in the middle of the worst storms but if all I did was meditated on some solitary mountain I would probably never know whether the positive effects of the meditation would remain with me as I walked through this interdependent existence. 

There was a time when the mountains called me strongly. When I believed that by the age of 50 I would want to be sitting in a cave somewhere seeking the truths of life. But things changed and here I am now. 

I think part of the sense of loss are seeing the different lives I lost because of the choices I made at every fork in the path. There will always be 'what if' moments in our lives.

Yesterday I was able to organise the BF-memoir into some sort of a time line and that process showed me why I might have had the boiling frog dream this year. It is a call to a deeper healing and I give myself over to it. It could hold the key to unlocking some buried parts of my psyche. Last night I dreamt that I had opened up a large trunk which stored some of my old clothing. I was pulling out and trying on the strange almost futuristic outfits its held. It feels like a time to seek the future in my past.

day 5

Woke again to dropping visibility and a severe headache. I had thought being out but indoors yesterday would make me forget the haze but it didn't work. My eyeballs felt like they would pop out of my face and I was disoriented and dropped and broke some crockery at lunch. For a bit everything had become blurry in my head. Then I waited almost 2 hours to see a doc and be given antihistamines, eyedrops and medicated lozenges. The high point of the day was a conversation with a young engineer from my husbands firm who told me how she thinks of him as her godfather. It was touching to hear about their relating and how she seeks him out when she needs advice. She was handling the haze with resilient equanimity and like many Singaporeans felt indignant about Singapore being chided for behaving like a baby. The smog cleared for a couple of hours in the evening as we rode the bus back home and it felt really good to see hope filled blue skies.

Today I cringe when I think about going out.  

A friend pointed out to me that unlike what I had felt world media was reporting this haze and she is probably right. Yet I have the intense sense of the forests, wild life and this little red dot disappearing and nobody knowing or caring. World media does report more widely now but it still is selective about which parts of the world, which issues and species get more coverage. At international seminars I always seem to know more about the Western world than they know about my world and if I had not been a teacher of environmental studies for a few years I probably would know very little about the natural world. But with news online from sources other than mainstream ones it doesn't have to be that way. I have days when I want to know whats going on in the world and I diligently check out different online sources and then there are days I just go inward. 

The haze has this effect of sending me inwards and its been good for writing the memoir. Things I thought I had forgotten have emerged from my subconscious. On thursday I really began enjoying writing for I began looking at those events from a different perspective and began touching what others in that story might have felt. I guess that is why I am really writing it - to get some knowledge about myself in those foggy years and recover lost parts.

There is a part of me that wanted to move towards normalcy despite this disruptive smog. But there is nothing normal about it. I have begun reading Jeanette Winterson's memoir, 'Why be Happy when you could be Normal?' Jeanette Winterson's adoptive mother says this to her when she tells her mother that she is in a relationship with another woman and happy. I think the key to what I do during these haze days is find a way to be happy and forget about returning to normalcy.

I think my husband and I will stay home today and talk instead of going to a film. He has been reading my blog and also been remembering and talking about those foggy years. I think we can put the time we are stuck indoors to good use to bring fresh life to the relationship.

day 4

friday, june 21

woke up to greyness. the psi had been below 100 through the night and maybe thats why i slept well. but its climbing again (256 at 9 am) and visibilty is the lowest its been so far. there has been talk of seeding clouds but it looks like nobody is going to do anything about it. probably nobody can. yesterday some indonesian official called this an act of god and said singaporeans were being babies complaining about it. aaargh i would love to smack the guy and dunk his face in a pail of concentrated smoke.

i think my mind must have acclimatised though for i am feeling less depressed and panicky today. maybe that will change through the day.

but i am also feeling angry - at racist world media that does not report this ecological and atmospheric disaster. i call it racist because news in certain parts of the world is more important than in others. i feel that if this was happening somewhere in the US all the world would know about it and maybe the UN would already be involved in putting pressure on whatever country was creating this disaster. world pressure to act sometimes does work. i really am wondering how the environmental biggies of the world have not got involved in this yet. rainforests contain zillions of species and apparently the average rate of extinction is 140 a day! thats a whole lot of forest burning and not to mention the plant and animal life suffocated by the fumes. how far can a bird fly to breathe?

yesterday i went to the gym hoping to release endorphins. i saw a flock of mynah birds sitting around the edge of the deserted pool dunking their heads in the water and wondered if they found some relief in the water. i hope they did.

there are so many things happening in the world that don't get reported in the media. just because i/u dont know something does not mean its not important. 

i have lost touch with a part of myself here in singy. the activist part. if i had still been in india i would know how to make noise about this so more of the world would know. that part really knew how to research and write so people would feel something was important. that part would know how to get a petition going. it feels like it would be a long inner journey to reach that part again but perhaps its not. i miss that part - it was always full of passion and intensity. very alive but maybe a tad reactive. more exploration needed. 

this is a rushed post since i have an appointment this morning and must leave soon. yes, thats why i am not bothered with grammar maybe i will come back and edit and add...