Kyoto

 Monday, July 29, 2024

           We arrived last evening and, this being our third Kyoto foray, found our way out of Osaka airport, to the trains, and then through Kyoto station, and to the hotel quickly. Recognizing sights on the train ride made me smile. This was the first time back after covid.

The foot with the stomped-on toe throbbed more than it did either Friday or Saturday and I limped dragging a suitcase behind me. The station and the hotel we normally book into were unrecognizable. Flooded with tourists like they’ve never been in previous summer visits. It felt too much, and we ordered in and fell asleep early. 

            This morning though I’ve tried slowing down with cups of tea in bed, I feel overwhelmed. Almost as if I don’t know who I am, a mini-identity crisis. In Naha I was a karateka, my days determined by the training. Wake, breakfast, train, shower, nap, dinner with dojo friends and family, and sleep. Repeat. 

Now I am merely a tourist. Here three days feel open to be filled with endless possibilities (on the fourth my friend will take us to a tea plantation). I have a list of less touristy gardens and temples, of pen shops, and matcha cafes, and eateries recommended by previous visitors or researched by us, to explore, but I have a toe that slows me down to snail’s pace and a feeling that I don’t know how to transit between karateka and tourist. Something of the former lingers and sticks. The mind does not want to let it go and wants more. This is the first time this transition has been so hard. Perhaps it is merely fear of not being able to walk far and fast. And that slowing down is also slowing down my mind from shifting into another mode. Perhaps the size of unfamiliar crowds is scaring me. Maybe I’ll know at the end of today. Part of me wants to hunker down in a café, or even this room, and just write and another wants to not ‘waste’ the days here. 

Of course, my father’s words, Don’t be afraid to waste your life, remind me that what feels like a waste is not. But then on holiday with my spouse who has been sedentary while I trained, makes me feel guilty if I don’t wander in productive ways — even though I know he won’t really mind. 

I know I could just go through a slow meander through the museum next door or go to the station area and find that fairly quiet garden after picking up some food. Or go to the main city where The Loft, and nice tea shops are located. 

A crow had been cawing last evening when we arrived, and I woke to its sweet cawing again. We’d forgotten to pull down the vertical blinds and the room brightened early. I’m suddenly realizing that amidst the anxiety of having a plan, is a quiet happiness of not needing to. 

I hear the shower stopping and I will stop writing and get ready to go to breakfast. The day will unfold as it needs to. I’ll be, we’ll be ok. 

Dark Life Stories

Monday, July 15, 2024

            I had lunch with a bunch of writer friends on Friday. I hadn’t met them all year since I had been hermit-ting so much, though through our WhatsApp chat I had stayed in touch with their happenings. A new writer person had joined the group and two of my older friends were telling him that I teach karate. They made me sound impressive and when I played it down, they called me humble. I had this strange sensation that I was listening to them talk about somebody that was not me.

            Later I told one of them, when she asked about my karate writing, that I still couldn’t call it a karate memoir. It is memory only, I told her, and I don’t quite identity with the person I am writing about. I honestly think that if I wrote the stories as if they happened to a character called Radhika I might write them better. At some point she said, imposter syndrome, and I agreed. 

            But today I realized it is not just imposter syndrome, it is more. Being a karate teacher, a Sensei, truly is something I don’t identity with. It is something I do, rather than something I am. But many others see it as something I am. I guess until I understand this split, though split doesn’t quite describe it, I might not be able to write a memoir on it. But the conversation with my friends helped me move slightly further along in trying to figure out this blocked writing. 

            All year I have wanted to feel settled (into my new home), flowing (in creativity), and focused (in whatever I do). Instead, I have felt unable to settle, blocked, and constantly distracted. And all this had made me feel frustrated beyond what I can express in words. But if I try to describe it, it feels like a several people, or hands possibly attached to people, inside my head, pulling and pushing, and pulling apart something in totally different directions. It feels like madness boxed up that will burst out of my skull and splatter my grey matter all over the walls. 

            I don’t know why I struggle instead of just following what is and avoid this immense psyche-ache.

            But going back to the issue of the split in what one does and what one is. I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but it makes sense to me. I could do things that I don’t feel I am, but others may feel that this is exactly who I am. It’s entirely possible. I think people who do things, that others around feel they are, and which they too identify with, are possibly happier people than misplaced idiots like me.

            But it is an interesting story to uncover, to see how I got to this spot in my life. Some people end up doing what they don't feel they are for money which they need to earn to support a family, or even a career they might have begun in when they were in their twenties but stuck to even after they saw it wasn't quite them. I don't quite know the forces that kept me in this thing i do. But, this fits in with what I had discovered in the memoir course — that I would never have been teaching karate in my own dojo if I had remained in Bombay. This Sensei identity has got everything to do with this move to Singapore. I have parked the investigation of this puzzle in a garage in my mind while I work on something else, or work on nothing else right now, as the other thing I want to work on is also merely in a state of brew. 

            I spent several years writing a novel with the theme of psychotherapeutic abuse. I had begun writing it as a memoir in 2013 but it felt too complicated to write the memoir and think of all the people whose privacy I would violate while writing. So, I fictionalized it and I loved doing that since fiction is what I am most comfortable with. But as the memoir course progressed, I began turning in more writing from the memoir of therapeutic abuse and these writings were the most alive, they were where my energy was. 

            It is what I should be writing as it is likely that it is what is blocking the flow. 

            On the weekend another writer friend sent me the name of a book to read, Writing Hard Stories. A book about how to write about difficult material. In this book the writer interviews several memoirists who have written about ‘hard’ life stuff. One of the authors said she did the same thing I did — for ten years she wrote novels about incest and didn’t write about the sexual abuse by her father. She knew these novels would never be published and yet she wrote them. She said perhaps it helped her get familiar with things, but the memoir took it deeper. 
            Some part of me knows that possibly this is the route I too need to take. 
            I am waiting until I return from my Naha and Kyoto trip next week to dive into that work. One of my friends, at the Friday lunch, reminded me to take notes on my karate trip. I know that story too needs writing. Another friend could see the connection between these two big stories or threads of my life, and I see some of that too. 

            That’s it for this week. It felt like these ‘discoveries’ were big and also, I wondered why I had not realized them sooner. 

            I will be busy in Naha next week and chilling in Kyoto the following and blogs may or may not be written. 

From my Journal

July 9, 2024

I don't do this but sharing an excerpt from my journal. Written on Sunday morning when I woke early for karate…

Pissed off with the audience and community quotes disappearing from my e-book. Will have to re-read or let them go. But will they disappear again before I can transcribe them. And there is no need to transcribe, I just love using my fountain pen and all the notebooks I have collected. I rarely go back to the quotes. Maybe I can quickly scan through the chapters and rush on. Ya, why do I write? What are my demons and obsessions?

It’s raining and my attention divided itself. I want to listen to the rain and I want to finish this darn book. But I’m going to stop that stupid, fervent, reading and listen to the rain. How should I describe it’s sound. A loud hushhh that drowns out other sounds, with an occasional — what they call pitter patter when the water hits a surface, like the ledge or the window. Too high up to hear it hitting the ground below. I suppose I must rouse myself and see if the window needs closing. This fear, this hope that it (the fear) will quiet before I leave. This absolute desire to not leave, to sit here in the light of the floor lamp while thick clouds darken the outside, and just read, or write, or listen.

There were dreams… “A winding road, a steep descent, we’d gone down it — me and two other women, but then we couldn’t find our way up. It felt treacherous and not quite even smooth, even on the way down but the climbing was worse. The road seemed more ‘broken’ and there were confusing branches that made me/us unsure of the path up. I wondered how I hadn’t seen them on the way down, why I hadn’t hesitated. I made at least one wrong turn or deliberate(?) fray into a crumbly road I hadn’t seen earlier…”

Is this a portrait of my life right now? I plummeted, plunged, or slowly drove into a gorge and need to, want to find my way back. Isn’t this here, this sitting, allowing myself to be ‘diverted’ by the sound of this rain not a way to do it?

The light has suddenly brightened. I can see the shape of the trees more clearly. It is the sunrise or have dark clouds dissipated? Throughout the day the trees, the way they look, change with the changing light — yet of course they never change within themselves. How do I look in some places to some people, and different, though I am the same everywhere.

Should I risk another caffeine bump? I don’t want to wake. A black or green tea at least perhaps!!

This is the last week before the week of leaving. There is a low, low, sinking feeling lingering. Always, always, always. I want to feel less insecure about the future. Many mornings when I feel scattered I rush to contain the feeling. But today I think I allow the panic. How much can it be really? Not that much more than when I push it underground and like lava slowly melting hard rock I feel, a constant sense of rumbling and shifting of the ground under my feet. Never stable, never secure, never still. 

Really time to go. I will need to cab it today. 

I’m not being lazy and trying to get out of writing a blog post. I felt it right to do this. How many thoughts go through us in such a short space of time, particularly when we are still in that vulnerable space of not quite awake. And how we contain the fears and move through our days with only a few perhaps recognizing we are shaky inside. I did this waking early and writing in my journal on my last day in Phuket when we had to be up to catch our flight (which anyway got delayed). I loved the gentle bed light, the cup of English breakfast, the soft CM nib of my Pilot Prera gliding over the Midori paper. The flow of nothingness and everything-ness that morning thoughts can be. Do you notice your morning mind being more open, softer, at once slower and faster, than the rest of the day?

 

A Day Late

July 3, 2024

            This morning, I had my Wednesday morning chat with my artist friend A. He arrived at the chat looking disturbed. I too was disturbed that morning, since the evening before in fact, or perhaps even since Monday. The connection was poor, and we had to sign on and off before we got a stable face-time call. By then A was frustrated. He had been sharing his thoughts about why a certain friend turning her back on him hurt so much even though four years had passed. He suggested since we both were scattered, and I had things to do it was perhaps better we sign off and get on with our days. ‘Neither of us seems to be present here,’ he said.

            I did have things to do. One of them being to sift through the anxieties that had begun building up since the weekend. I also wanted to do exercises to help with the bad fall I had on Monday, when I slipped on slimy algae in a crack on the tiles in a green field. A fall which had reversed all the progress I had made during my Phuket trip on strengthening my injured left thigh and lower back. Also the issue of the leak from the apartment above us had returned. The owner was back and now we needed to re-open the taps and deal with the leak. 

            All the peace that I had gathered in the Phuket break vanished and last night I was angry and could not sleep.

            I should have been glad about A’s suggestion but it bugged me and I went off on a tirade. ‘Ok,’ I shrugged. ‘But I am present. I may not be whole in the sense that I’m not feeling great and yes, I am a bit anxious, leaks scare me, but I am here. For me this time is like the commitment to the time we make as artists to go into our caves and sit no matter if the muse is with us or not. I mean, we still go in and sharpen our pencils on bad days. We don’t say it’s not a good day today so I’ll leave in a half hour. That’s the commitment we make to creativity and it is the same for me about friendship.’

            A broke into a smile. ‘This is what I love about our chats. We can be fully into our misery, and we can also be a bit detached and see ourselves. I haven’t been feeling sure of myself. Not confidant at all and have been scared of people thinking that I don’t bring value to the table. I feel that if I am not on and not fully able to bring something to the connection people might judge me not worthy of being around and drop me.’ 

            Something shifted. Our conversation deepened and time, our Wednesday hour together, expanded. Friendship isn’t about being with someone only when one is feeling whole. But not every friend will sit with you through those times. 

            I too had been feeling like A for months. I had hermit-ed. I had declined invitations and stayed with the emotion. I hadn’t run away from my feelings; I hadn’t run to meet people and find reassurance. I just had been. 

            And on Wednesday in Phuket, last week, after the first two restless, anxious, days, the anxiety had run itself out and I had relaxed fully into the blue, sunny, days with great Thai food, a gorgeous pool to dip into and laze by, and fun evenings with powered cocktails or wine. I had had a few insights about why I want to write about karate—it has a lot to do with my relationship to, my fear of, power. The time away had been a healing time for body and mind and self-belief. 

            Somewhere I had reconnected to passions that had felt underground, dead. My passions for inks and pens and writing, for karate, for politics and justice. I was able to see which issues I felt confidant to comment on as an expert and where I hesitated and doubted. I could see the things I censored when I wrote this blog — things I even censored from myself in some ways (and I need to explore that soon). But I felt more whole than I had before I went there. The break had been good. 

            The things that happened on my return, particularly the fall, which has brought my body back to pain, and the fear of the leak re-starting have taken away a lot of the relaxed feeling. I am unsettled. Very unsettled. Yet strength and belief remain. 

            Somewhere I feel like I have been doing something right over the last months, which admittedly had felt mostly wrong during those months, that is dissolving the veils that hid me from myself. Somewhere I am trusting my gut choices more. 

            But next week is another week and who knows what my insides will be feeling. This post is a day late and I am considering whether I should take a break from the blog.