human trafficking

Over the last few weeks there has been an image that's really been bothering me. The image wrenches at my gut and makes me so angry. But I also feel immensely helpless and impotent so I end up trying to blank it out because I feel too much about it but cannot do anything about it - at least a part of me believes that I cannot do anything.

The image that disturbs me so deeply is seeing these men, mostly older and mostly white, pawing at these very young vulnerable east asian girls. 

Last week I saw a man, maybe 60 or more, leaning into this woman in a food court. Holding her hand and caressing it. His face was flushed with excitement. The girls body language and face were tense and I felt that any moment she would burst into tears. She looked younger than my daughter. 

The following day I saw a large man walking with this little young woman. He had crushed her against him and his huge arm encircled her tiny waist. She was looking at the floor as she walked. 

The first thought that came to mind was sexual trafficking and exploitation. I saw images of forced sexual labour, confiscated passport and threats to family back home.  But immediately I said to myself, no not here, not in Singapore. It's clean and safe. Such things don't happen here. So, I pushed the thought out of my mind as something in my imagination but of course it still lingered within and found a way into my subconscious and few days later I dreamt - of a powerful man holding a woman captive. She had found a way to escape and I was helping her but he had found out and was playing a 'cat and mouse' game with her and me, smiling all the time as we made a dash to freedom.

Of course I worked on the dream as parts of myself. Of my psyche and found the different energies of predator, prey, power, victim, fear, within myself but I could not leave it at that. Some dreams are about the collective too. I googled human trafficking in Singapore and read that Singapore is indeed a destination country for girls trafficked for work and commercial sexual exploitation. On the ONE Singapore website I read -

At any given moment, 2.5 MILLION PEOPLE are victims of trafficking working as forced labour. Most are between the ages of 18 – 24. Almost all experience physical or sexual violence. More than 40% are forced to work in the sex industry. Estimated annual profits made from trafficking in Asia are US$10 billion.  Human Trafficking occurs in Singapore every day. 

(at http://www.onesingapore.org/stop-human-trafficking/)

Yes, Singapore. It happens here too and it is fairly visible, though most of us turn a blind eye to it?

I am going to stop writing here and let this brew in me as I explore the websites of organisations working with this issue in Singapore and see if I can make a difference even in a tiny way about this problem in our world. It still for the most part feels like this immense problem, involving large crushing organisations that have escaped the reach of the most powerful law enforcing bodies - so how can little insignificant me do anything? And maybe by myself I cannot but along with others even seemingly impossible change can be brought into our world.

Today

Today I want to write to explore a thought in my head about the value of negative feelings. Even as I write this I find myself not liking the word negative so I replace it with uncomfortable.

Feelings that make my body and mind uncomfortable, restless or confused. I guess some part of me values comfort, peace and clarity over the above feelings. 

Last year I had a falling out with a friend who was a believer of positive psychology and appreciative inquiry. He believed that negative feelings when left to themselves multiplied and grew and took over the mind. He had learnt to tap away negativity and emerge comfortable and happy. 

I on the other felt that each uncomfortable state of mind and body contain an inner core of truth that call to be felt and assimilated. These so called negative feelings need to be unfolded and this for me is a necessary aspect of awareness. 

Both of us were seekers. He looked at the path of positivity and I leant towards finding my truths from my shadow. We talked and explored and perhaps even assimilated each others beliefs but in the end my shadow was too heavy for him, he felt it engulfed him and made it that much harder for him to reach his light. 

He walked away, I was hurt and without realising it I began breathing away my pain. That was not that hard to do and I did find I could quite easily turn away from it and reach a state of peace. Perhaps I even needed to do this as the years crises suddenly felt overwhelming. But somewhere within the surface calmness I sensed something simmering. A powerful water serpent, strong open jaws, enclosed inside a mountain, writhing and swimming from one end to the other of its' mountain walls, twisting and turning its long neck. Roaring silently. Wanting to get out, energy building into an explosive frenzy.

Bombay. The year finally began losing its intense and fearful hold on me and I breathed more easily, more naturally, resting in each moment. I did a long overdue blood test which showed some high liver values.

It was only this monday that I began to feel how much I had lost of my essence in breathing away my pain without first knowing it accurately. So today I decide to notice and meticulously name a discomfort, a negative feeling before I breathe it away. I feel this might help to detoxify my liver.

It was in 1999 that I had such elevated liver function values. Much more than today. I was emerging from a very painful, poisonous time. Longer and more intense than last year. Authentic connection to the toxins finally freed me from them.

Everyone has a different path to the truth. Of course for me some paths are more inclusive. Something about Singapore and perhaps the world prefers the path of positivity. For me that path excludes the essence of me and the path of staying close to my shadow, where everything I can ever feel or be resides, is more inclusive. Maybe this year I will find I am wrong in holding this view but today it feels good to just clarify what I believe and try to live it deeply.

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 :)