what i discovered in indonesia
before i left italy for indonesia, i had been working on a big project: i was to figure out and write a philosophical treatise on "Happiness After the Peak" (what i thought was my "peak" and what i believed to be a universal peak)
in my mind, i had "peaked" at 22 and thought that the unfairness of life is such that we experience all the best things by the age of 22, after which there is nothing good to look forward to. the best things like innocent friendship, your first dog, your grandpa who was still alive (dogs and grandpas both don't live very long, from the perspective of a young life), going to disneyland but most of all: romantic love; there is no drug greater than this, especially when laced with lust.
(by the way, having not written for a while, i find it quite difficult to express myself verbally -- i always wondered if it was indeed a good thing that i was writing so much. now i think it did silent invisible things to my brain which no one saw but the benefits of which i enjoyed naively, without knowing any other way to be. but these once well-trodden neural pathways have since grown wild, and now i must machete my way through to forge a path once again. also, it is not that i did not want to write in indonesia, but i seldom found the time, since our days and even nights were full of activity. i frantically jotted down notes when i could, like a locksmith carving keys to doors that could forever close)
my idea was to find a new mountain to climb. a mountain higher than everest. i had to find something to beat all that came before and to climb it with added burdens of adulthood. and the sheer joy of sighting a greater peak would've been enough to render burdens trivial, so long as i could spot a new peak. but i could not find any.
and i had nearly given up on this. i made a phony resolution called "the seasons of life" -- i divided life up into 25 year quarters of four seasons which begin in spring. i was to accept that the spring of my life had ended and that now was the summer of my life: the time for frolicking and girlish skipping was over, it was time to grow and harvest.
but then indonesia.
i expected nothing of indonesia but indonesia slaughtered the beast of illusions and the invulnerability of the "peak" of life now seemed so small
i became aware of something bigger which i do not know how to name because in fact i'm not sure what it is
i think it is not one thing
and even i'm getting tired of this "oh indonesia was so great but i do not know how to explain it" thing -- i pride myself on being able to express myself!! and why even mention a thing when you can't explain it!!
i guess i am trying to figure it out through writing, without analyzing it to death and killing it in the process. it's a delicate thing, not killing a thing.
what i mostly wish to express is that the fear that the best days have gone by is no longer.
i feel i am in the best days of life (so far) now, and that the peaks of the past are level with these days and that they had maybe even been level for a little while now, but it had gone without detection because i was looking elsewhere. i had been sitting on a mine of precious riches not knowing of their existence.
what are those riches?? what are they?? and what did you discover in indonesia??
(why am i blocked even in my own stream of consciousness writing?)
i think i experienced things in indonesia i did not know how to intellectualize and which i did not want to cheapen through verbalization
maybe i experienced
- the brand new sensation of diving -- the feeling of sinking down into nothingness to find myself once again in a new world. each new site is a surprise ; the joy of being surrounded by fish
- happy people who know how to smile and wave (i am reading that muhammad believed or that god had told him that smiling is a charity upon people -- this is true, if the smile is stemmed from a feeling of purity and joy...such a smile transmits joy from one person to another)
- a new paradigm of being, a new value system. already, Information Age indonesia gave me this feeling, i felt that people are more invested in the community and in each other's wellbeing as i have ever experienced elsewhere. i once used to feel afraid when i was around many people, but in indonesia i felt safe because i knew there were people around and i felt confident that they would help me. and then, in the jungle, in Stone Age Jungle Indonesia, i experienced a brand new web of thoughts and questions which included: "if i never write a book, i think i'll be ok" & "if i never 'accomplish' anything, i think i'll be ok" & "for what reason do i need to write a book anyway?" & "have i been wanting to write out of ego or pressure from a society that tells me to produce and that tells me i am nothing unless i make something?" -- it was a spiritual experience, something like...being in the "now" (what a cringy, hypocritical word to say, a word that has been milked for cash but in my case it was true)...something like an "awakening". and all it took was being temporarily woven into a social web of people who think differently, to pick up signals from the collective unconscious of a people who exist far outside of the sterile zoo animal life i'd known. they blew the door open for me and showed me that there is a big range of ways to be and think and that what i thought was the entire universe was only one enclosure in one zoo in one city out of 10 thousand of cities in hundreds of countries. i've been let out of the zoo.
really, i think this is the metaphor that best explains my entire indonesian revelation.
i was once in a zoo, and i had been fed the "best" things but i was still unhappy and i had "peaked" when they brought in some suitors for mating and i had fun selecting them but since the death of my favorite companions and since i have selected and settled down with one mate, i have been feeling mysteriously unhappy, but not knowing how to fix it. i thought that having the "best" things should be enough -- i mean, if i'm not happy, then who could ever be? i thought that i could fashion a toy out of items in the enclosure, find new ways to have fun in it, but i could not think of anything.
indonesia was a rogue zookeeper who decided to let me out.
i almost feel like i'd been in a CULT, too.
i'd been taught to conflate islam with terrorism
and to fear
all the islamophobia spread in the west had led me to believe that all muslims were judgmental, extreme people. i almost didn't want to go to indonesia because i thought that muslims would make me feel uncomfortable. i thought people would be staring at me in disapproval because this was my experience in myanmar!
in myanmar, buddhist monks stared at me in disgust and judgment as i responded in frustration to a little boy trying to force me to buy his things. he had been trying to sell me a plastic bag and after i had said no a few times, he stuck the plastic bag in my pocket. so i threw the plastic bag on the ground and kept walking. i initially tried to give him the plastic bag back, but he refused and held out his hands and demanded money. i loath being forced and coerced, so i threw the plastic bag on the ground, and the monks judged me. i could feel their disdain burning on my cheeks.
i thought that muslims would be like this but worse, that they would judge me for not wearing what they wore, for not covering myself fully the way that they do -- because after all, isn't that why there are terrorists? aren't they upset that western people don't follow the same rules? in fact, i do not know why there are terrorists and i do not know what they're really upset about but there is a difference between being muslim and being a terrorist and never did i experience even so much as judgment from muslims in indonesia. i felt so safe around them, safer than i felt in europe (especially spain, where my belongings got stolen from right beside me)
this revelation led me to be curious about indonesian beliefs -- i was so impressed by the energies i felt. where do these energies come from? how can i harness that sort of disarming charm and charisma? surely religion plays a role? hearing the call to prayer 5x a day must do something to a person? what does it mean? what are they saying when they call you to prayer? and what do they say in their minds when they pray? could doing this 5x a day have an impact on a person, remind them to be magnanimous and to try to be sweet to others? i wanted to know. i still want to know. that's why i've been reading muhammad's biography. i simply want to understand.
then i've also been curious about lives and ways of people who live in the Stone Age.
i use the words "Stone Age" matter-of-factly and even endearingly, longingly, romantically -- it comes with no prejudice or presumption about it being "worse" than the Information Age or Bronze Age.
i had a taste of Stone Age jungle living and it taught me what religion and spirituality had been trying to convey through words and intellectuality but which had failed to convince me.
that which i contested in theory and could not experience in practice was in the jungle and now it had enveloped me. the jungle, i thought, was the garden of eden and the people there were adams and eves "before" and we are the "after", the adams and eves casted out of heaven, because we had tasted the forbidden fruit of money, competition and ruthless, bottomless greed. they, the adams and eves in the garden of eden, are not totally free of troubles, but their troubles seem to carry less psychological weight and are thus manageable. the outside world with its strange ways, however, is not. because their troubles rarely stem from evil, their troubles are straightforward facts of physics and biology. (now, they do experience the sting of evil from the perverse outside world always trying to rape their land -- but still, they gave me a glimpse of paradise.)
in the jungle, i experienced compassion and generosity and friendship, the vitamins which we instinctively crave. the jungle is a deity who provided you with food and who, at the same time, made you feel vulnerable inside of it. it gave you life and could take it away just as easily. it played the duplicitous role of both a nurturing mother and fearsome a common "enemy" which united the people inside of it. and so, forcing families to be a united front, it eradicated mistrust and created barrier from the invisible troubles of the outside world. sometimes, in the outside world, we think we're going crazy with our negative thoughts. we wonder why we can't stop them. but there is nothing wrong with us, per se: we are having a natural reaction to a strange situation, and we could just as easily stop these thoughts once we return to a healthy environment. the spiritual ideals i learned about was handed to me for "free" and without effort. in the jungle, eating and sharing fruits, sitting and laughing, i had no need for negative thoughts -- i felt happy. when i did think, i thought that jokes can be made even with a vocabulary of less than 100 words! jokes can be made in the spirit of teasing each other, because you feel close enough to do so and you believe that your name is safe in their mouth.
why did my name feel safe in their mouths?
we barely knew each other, but i felt safe with them.
i thought: they can do things we can't do. they are wiser than us. and they are more beautiful than us. i miss them, but i figure that to them i am just another foreigner, moved to pieces their way of being which is natural to them. i miss them because i had never seen anyone like them but they probably have seen hundreds of me. but i don't like to think this way. it is my logical mind which thinks this way but my heart doesn't want to believe it. i want to believe that they felt that i was touched, for reasons they don't need to understand, and that they will remember me too, from time to time.
after coming back to italy, i wanted to keep staying in the jungle. so i read the journals of an anthropologist who spent 5 years in a jungle in sumatra with the people of that jungle. it gave me a nostalgic feeling, a familiar feeling, but opened me up even more and introduced me to a new culture different than the one i experienced.
i want to read more. i want to read tristes tropiques -- i already like the opening line, i felt very much the same way. from that line, i could feel that he and i share a secret.
back in italy, i am enjoying the sun and reading and i want to keep practicing writing (to express things easily, like i was once able to do, but i want to do it even better and i want to perhaps even express some things which cannot be intellectualized)
i've been enjoying food and yoga too and the company of friends old and new
i feel i'm on a mission i can't quite name because i don't know what it is ... part of the mission is to discover the nature of the mission. it starts with reading and writing, i feel this.