Yoga full stops

Talking to a friend of mine in England, I was trying to explain to her what yoga is like for me, and I said it is like a full stop (period) in a sentence. And since both of us mark a lot of papers, that got us talking about having shorter sentences in life, as well as in prose. The first lesson of writing good prose is to have shorter sentences. It makes it easier to define a point. In life, it makes us more aware of the point too.  On reflection, this life of ours--a one way street that we write our legacy on--could do with more full stops.

The full stop is so important in languages that we see it everywhere. Only in Thai is there no symbol corresponding to the full stop, although a space is typically used to mark the end of a sentence. But even in Chinese and Japanese, a small circle is used as a full stop. While in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao the full stop is placed at center height instead of on the line. In Hindi, Sanskrit and some other Indian languages, a vertical line "।" is used to mark the end of a sentence. The full stop is important in order to convey meaning, to distinguish from one line of thinking from another. By this method, the previous sentence is used as a foundation for the next sentence. This building process allows for more complex thoughts to emerge in an incremental fashion. Building on from past foundation. Life similarly needs a method for being aware of the complexity without overloading our consciousness.

Full stops allows me to view events and to become conscious that they are past. Forgive/enshrine move on to the present. A sense of presence. Yoga, at its fundamental state, is a time where I just "am." I do not have to "be." Lives tend to become complex and convoluted. When there are multiple narratives and threads that resist being truncated, I have to consciously sever them. I have to be conscious that "Now I am."

Especially with children who  have a running thread of energy. With their constant narratives of their lives which I adopt as my own, it is difficult to sever these lines of consciousness. But it is necessary to reclaim your sanity, to reclaim a reference point. It is a welcome opportunity to close down a sentence in your life, and start a new one.  We cannot continue with the same sentence, with the same theme. We face a lot of complexity in our life and being able to put sections into the past is useful for our mental health. Like music, there needs to be a moment of respite. Otherwise the every spiraling crescendo will create an imbalance, a dissonance.

I will take time to gain that perspective. Whatever helps you delineate the past, providing a break--whether it is running, walking, painting, writing, whatever it is--be conscious of the process. For me, I plan on more full stops in my life.

Time Travel

I am a time traveler. I am lucky. I can go back and forth and examine my history, my past.. I can travel through geography—that’s easy.  More importantly, I have maintained enough contacts to enable me to visit past relationships. All that are significant.  I am lucky.

Most of the people and the places are still around, and I have the resources to enter this portal and to interact again. 


Predictably, relationships proved the most emotive. But this time around I had an agenda.  Or an agendum, one question: What is your view of our past relationship?…and then just sit back and listen. That’s was the hard part. 

I wanted to understand the other person’s perspective. In some cases, it was the first time that I listened to the other side. It proved a mirror, reflecting an image of myself without my intervening narrative.It is not what I wanted to hear, but it was what I needed to hear.

Repeating this process, back and forth, until I covered a 35 year time span. I was ready for the answer. By touching on all significant relationships I felt that I deserved an epiphany.

But there were no epiphanies. But I still felt that I deserved one. 

My six month sabbatical is coming to an end and I wanted to tie it all together. There was a slow realization that what I needed to hear, I knew already.  And the words of the great poet Omar Khayyam entered my life again. “Alike for those who for today prepare, And those that after a tomorrow stare, A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries "Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There!" and I am left where I was, but now I know where I was. And I treasure what I had, and can still have.

I realized that relationships are the warp threads in my life. We somehow resonated together. I can live through their experiences and they can live through mine. Empathy, love, and sometimes humor.  In life there are threads that form the basis of memory, the warp threads in a weave. Warp threads are the ones that run vertical to the loom. 

The other experiences are hinged upon this thread and run parallel. The warp thread holds the weaving still while the weft threads are being woven in. The weft are the nuances: Cutting fresh bread at my parent’s home where I was born, eating a wedding ice cream wedge, sharing a bright ale in a local pub, smelling wood fires early in the morning, and geography.

What was unpredictable was the emotion attached with geography. Geography is more comfortable than with people. Geography doesn't confess hidden secrets. They loved me, I loved them, I cheated, they cheated, lies that we told each other that we now confessed. Bastard children, hidden births, abortions, lost pregnancies, failed marriages. Hidden then, and now in the safety of age, exposed. 

Geography does not lie, it is always there and you just missed it before. Geography is true, and yet, I still had to listen, I still had to look and become an active interpreter. But with geography there is no ego, there is no hurt. Running on the tow paths of the Kennet and Avon canal, despite  the cold snap in the early morning, yesterday’s rain that muddied the path staining my bright clean running shoes, I felt at home. 

Running along the narrow path, mile after mile, with vistas opening up to me at every corner it exposed me again to why I love the British countryside. The tranquil existence of canal life, calm waters, neatly contained by the canal walls, narrow boats and the ancient trees that envelope the smooth clear liquid path. This experience is what gives color to my life, the pattern.

Some writers talk about either the weft while others talk about the warp. Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia concentrates on the warp, on people, writing far less about geography than one would expect from a travel writer.

My epiphany did not come from my past relationships, but from my present ones. The realization that I will have fewer warps then wefts in my life made me think about the significant people in my life that tie my experiences together. People, and more accurately, close friends, children and family that build up my tapestry as warp threads are the lasting structures.

I am planning my next time travel hoping to strengthen my warps. Warp speed and time travel go together.  

Not Old Age

Thinking I just could jump in and pick up from where I left off, and after a hiatus of five months I went to a bikram yoga class. Although I have been running and hiking I have not stretched. It comes as no surprise therefore that in the second warm up exercise I pull a nerve in my sacrum and ended looking at the ceiling for the next hour, while the class came to an eventual stop.

The back pain is nothing new.  It has been a few years since I had a flair up, but I have had this problem for years. So what is different now is that nearly everyone jokes that its because I am getting old. “Don’t dare say it because I’ll scratch your car” was the goodbye salute after I crawled out of the car coming back from the yoga class. But in the loneliness of my apartment, hobbling around to do the most basic of caretaking tasks, I look at myself and my personal secret narrative repeats the obvious and simplest explanation. That I am getting old.

I was divorced seven years ago. I stood in front of the mirror and for the first time saw the old man looking back at me. That same old man that looks back at me today.  Marriage deludes you, fixes you in a time when your ideals carry you over the turbulent reality like a silent fog. A fog created by all the activity around you. Living with a wife, then kids that come fast and furious, the mortgages, the cars (plural), the pets (plural) all distract you from looking at yourself. Marriage slowly pushed me out of myself, with a blindfold consoling me.

Looking back at that old man, the blindfold came down. With the release of the blindfold came the reality of the changes that took place that I was not aware. A harsh reality that scraped the cushioning tissue off and left behind the raw, exposed senses. You never feel more close to living, but also so close to tasting your internal fear. The experience leaves you without any illusions, perhaps for the first time ever there are no distractions. It takes a derailment to appreciate the foundation of the rails.  With this reality came the realization that I have aged.

I work at staying healthy. I am determined to be conscious of my aging and not to fight it. But a chronic back pain sends all of these conscious edifices that I have erected to tumble and silently crush in the quiet of my apartment. But on reflection, when I confront the narrative, I realize that it has nothing to do with age. And then I question the process. Why it is so easy for others and then for me to assign old age as the cause. What if these negative physical events "will me" to age—make me age? Can we grow ourselves to age? How strange is that, while I lie on my back holding my laptop to type?

Can I be programming my brain incorrectly by thinking that I hurt because I am aging? This is nothing new, it is as old as Ormond college where I am in right now. In 1890, William James proposed the idea of brain programming —brain plasticity—in The Principles of Psychology. However, it was much later that the Polish neuroscientist Jerzy Konorski popularized it. One of the fundamental principles is known as synaptic pruning, where individual connections within the brain are constantly being removed or recreated, largely dependent upon how they are used. Negative plasticity, assigning wrong associations to an event, create the reality of that (negative) association. So if I think that my hurting back is caused by my aging, I create that reality — those synaptic networks — so that the next time I experience a negative event, I automatically think it is due to aging. Until I end up with only associating bad events with aging. When a bad event happens my brain will be programmed to assign my age and not the fact that I need to warm up, or that I perhaps cannot just go to a bikram class after a hiatus of 4 months. It is not aging, it is not looking after the needs of my body. So the next person that tells me its because I am getting old will get their car personalized.

Free Wine at a Winery

You expect to get free wine samples at a winery, but I was given a bottle of wine for free by the owner.  After an interlude of hilarity.  I received the bottle after going round the back of the shop with the owner where he said he wants to show me something. So on our return, when he gave me a free bottle of wine,  there were a lot of winks and nods.

It all started when I confessed that I do not like Shiraz. Justin McNamee the owner of Samuel's Gorge winery, where we were closing a day of wine tasting,  continuing to enjoy the wine he poured for his visitors,  took me around the back of the shop and showed me the old vintage equipment as a way of explaining how pure the process is.  My answer being that “that purity” might be why I do not like it. Quizzically he stopped talking and waited. 

Well the reason I do not like Shiraz has nothing to do with the quality. It is to do with the taste and texture of wine. Certain wine resonates with me as an unique experience. Whether it is because of what I was brought up with, perhaps it transports me to another more happy times. Perhaps it agrees with my constitution, makes me feel better, happier, stronger more virile. Perhaps it is what I expect a good wine to taste like. Whatever the reason, some wine does it for me. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot does it for me. Other wines, especially the pure types of Shiraz, Pinots and especially the Zinfandels, do not.

That is what Justin and I talked about in the back of his wine pressing workshop. And the same attraction applies to people. After sampling some 16 wines and a couple of bottles of wine, a delicious lunch, talking was easy and open. We discussed wines and then people until the obvious distinction become less apparent.   I  feel a resonance with clever, adventurous, confident, slightly eccentric people. I feel comfortable in their company. Not all people have these qualities, but within this group, I gravitate towards the more unique. Selecting the pure wine. This is where Justin and I shook hands and he presented me with a bottle of tempranillo wine.

There are mini reflections of the whole. The secrets of life might be too broad for our brains to comprehend, but there are mini reflections, glares that we can perceive. And it is a stretch to even suggest that wine reflects life, but it is within our comprehension to understand that our appreciation of wine (or beer, or art, or music) is based on fundamental pleasures. Pleasures that are specific and tuned to who we are as human beings. Combining all of these pleasures together; from tactile to taste to auditory to visual and you can easily see how there is a dance of the sense. A symphony.  Each appreciation reflects your essence as a person. And because of this essence, these tastes only get refined but not changed.  I have a similar resonance with people. Old close friends that show up in my life still resonate deeply within me.

Johannes Kepler was convinced that the geometrical blueprint that provided the Creator with the model for decorating the whole world was based on musical harmonies.  He attempted to explain this not with mathematics or physics, but with music. And he was not alone. The harmony of the universe had been studied by Pythagoras, Ptolemy and many others before Kepler. The central set of "harmonies" was the musica universalis or "music of the spheres."

Finding, or coming across wine, music, people that are in tune with your harmony is not often. Shiraz might be a pure tone, but it is not part of my harmony. Welcome Tempranillo.

Darkness

I am a city guy. I realized this when in my second visit to Beijing, I went off on my own without even a worry or a care. I could hardly pronounce my hotel correctly, but I felt sure that I will get by, because it is a city. Cash is the oxygen line that feeds you in any pool of humanity. So, back to the present, when I was offered to stay another night at Cape Tribulation one of the most remote places on earth--because of another mishap with the tour booking (for another story)--I hesitated. I am not comfortable out of my environment, out of the city.

Cape Tribulation is a headland 68 miles north of Cairns. It has a funny, foreboding name. It was ofcourse, named by an Englishman, Captain Cook. In his land grab of 1770 his ship Endeavour was shipwrecked on a reef 12 miles off the coast of the cape. He was in such a good mood that he also named the mountain at the tip as Sorrow Mountain. Cape Tribulation and Sorrow Mountain. Located within the Daintree National Park and at the edge of the Great barrier reef, both the reef and the forest are now World Heritage areas. Cape Tribulation survives on this fame through mainly backpacking tourist. With a population of 101 in the 2006 Census, it really is a small backcountry resort.

My resort was at one end of the village. A well maintained resort but with a limited restaurant. So when I went kayaking and the tour started from another hotel with a fully exposed kitchen and two chefs working, I knew this is the place to visit for dinner. Walking there later on in the afternoon was easy. As I got out of my resort, two young brothers from Sydney stopped and gave me a lift. I should have checked on the mileage, but I had not spoken with many people lately and I was in a talkative mood. I did not see the distance nor the terrain traveled in their rented car. But I was not worried. After a few beers the Sydney brothers headed off to prowl the local scene while I stayed at the resort to wait for 6pm when (all) restaurants open up for service. And what a service. The meal was excellent...chicken breast with sun dried tomato and feta cheese wrapped in proscuito on a bed of spinach, asparagus and caramelized onions, potatoes with a hollandaise sauce. I savored the dish, not noticing the sunset. It was 7pm.

Satiated and well pleased with myself for making a good selection (both the dish and the restaurant) I headed out of the resort. It was pitch black. With the lingering refraction of light behind me I headed onto the unpaved dirt road to start walking back to my resort. It was a surprise how quickly it got dark. That kind of darkness that compels you to put your hand in front of your face to make sure that you cannot see it.

The sky was overcast and the moon was not visible. I stopped. I was still happy from my meal. I looked around and I saw nothing. I looked back and I had only traveled some 30 meters but the glow of the resort was only faint enough to outline the canopy of the forest encircling it. I stood still for a few seconds trying to will my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I looked forward. Nothing. I scuffed my boots against the dirt track to reassure myself that I was on the track. Looked back again and then headed forward away from the glimmer. No noise but my breathing.

To be engulfed by darkness is the best way of describing the total lack of visual clues of where I was. By scuffing the road I knew I was still on the path. I knew that on both sides there were ditches, in some cases leading vertically down maybe 10-15 feet into a river or a swamp.

Imagine being in space, with heavy gravity. The canopy of the trees closing upon me, yet unseen. I continued to walk on the dirt track. The road seems to undulate. Looking back I saw nothing. I was walking fairly slowly now. My initial spring in my step gave way to a more cautious stomp. My ears sensitive to the rustling noises of the forest. Rain drizzling but hardly touching me. The trees and shrubs get to it first. They are predators for water.

Then I hear a noise coming closer fast. I turn towards the noise ahead of me, but it must have bounced off the trees, I turn back and I see a light coming from behind me. Then a noise, an engine. It is loud and revving. I look at the expanding light, and then it comes around the corner. There is one light source, bright as a sun staring at me and coming straight at me. VROOOMM. What looked like a Triumph Bonneville, a café racing bike, doing 60 miles an hour with the driver hugging the chassis of the bike and skirting the edge of the track.  Five feet from where I was. VROOOM. I am temporarily blinded by the light and then I hear another sound following. Another engine, revving, but this time the sound is more deep and sonorous. Two lights heading towards me, at the same speed as the bike. They must be racing. A bike and a diesel land cruiser. I feel like a witness to a non-event.

I see their lights become fainter and then the darkness engulfs me once more. Although temporary blinded again, my night vision eroded by the bright lights, I was more elated because I realize that at least there is traffic on the road. I continue walking into the darkness. It is drizzling still. Sometimes when I pass a section of the track where the canopy does not reach over, where there is a creek or a river, I feel the coldness of the rain, otherwise I hear the rain on the layers of vegetation from more than a hundred feet up.

I continue scuffing my shoes to ensure that I am on the dirt track. I hear rustling on the side. I tell myself that it is just the wind. And then I start thinking of the story of Rip Van Winkle, and the animated version of the story, where the tree comes alive and attempts to catch him. I laugh it off. My internal narration does not laugh. It continues to go through the story. I start burping, anything just to make a sound. I pretend that I am in charge. I start shouting. Nothing. Not even an echo. I stop dead. I listen and the only sound I hear is the rustling of the leaves and the creaking of branches. my breathing is deeper. I still cannot see anything. I check my watch which has a back light. I have been walking for ten minutes. Hmm, I start wondering how far have I walked.

(A picture of the track in the morning driving there to pick up the rest of the group )

Another ten minutes pass and no more traffic and I still have no clue where I am. I am alone in the middle of one of the oldest forests in the world. Some 260 million years. I start walking briskly. The backlight from my watch gives me some company. I start looking at the time every minute. I start walking faster. I glance back and up and to the side. Nothing. Then light ahead of me. Initially, I thought that it was the village, but t was moving towards me. Two lights, a car coming up ahead. This four-wheel truck being driven more slowly than the last one, they pass me, and then I see the brake light come on, then the white reverse light.  The truck reverses up to me, wind down their window. I can see two dark aboriginal men. “You OK?” The driver asked. I really wanted to say no please help me, but what came out of my mouth amazed me “Just heading back to my hotel, thanks for checking. Is it far?” “About ten minutes walk” the passenger softly responds. “Cheers” and the truck slowly moves away from me.

Why is it indigenous people are not afraid to stop and offer help? When I arrived in America and persuaded my wife at the time to go for a walk to the Hoover damn from the village of Boulder, I misread the distance. Having just came from Malta, where an inch on the map is ten paces, in Las Vegas an inch was more than 5 miles. Tired, hot, and thirsty, having drunk all of our giant Slurpee, we gave up and tried to hitch a ride back to our apartment. My wife who was four months pregnant with our first child at the time was suffering from the heat. I tried hitching for more than 20 minutes. Nothing. Cars were zooming past us. I was getting worried. By this time the sun started to go down and although we have only been in Las Vegas for a few days, we knew that once the sun sets the temperature drops. Then an old beaten up dark green chevy impala stops. I look inside the cavernous space of these big American cars, and there in the corner was an old American Indian man. Long hair, waistcoat, dark and craggy complexion. “Y’all need a lift?” “Yes please”  Yes please, I should have gone AHLLELUJA, god be praised…”Yes Please” is what came out. “I was robbed last week giving a lift “ As we both settled into the front seat. Again I was amazed at what came out of my mouth. In a gesture of reassurance that he is safe I said  “I am Maltese, from Malta” as a way of assuring him that we are safe. He drove us to the bus station and then disappeared. Indigenous people have always come into my life and made it better.

So here I was, alone and in darkness again, transported back to when I first moved to the United States. The contact with the aboriginal men started me to reminiscence. My life started to flash in front me. As I walked deeper into the darkness, I reminisced about the past. I thought of all the changes, all the lost energies, all the trials, and (my) tribulations. And then I become aware of how utterly alone I am in the world. I stopped walking. I looked up. I could not even see the stars to define my smallness in the universe. I was simply a dark speck in a dark universe.

I was alone. If I was attacked by an overzealous dingo there would be no one to inform. No one knew who I was. In the middle of the night, at 8pm, in a dirt track in one of the oldest forests on earth, thousands of miles from anyone who knows me and could identify me,  I become aware that being able to give up everything is how you can truly release from worry and to live. Being out of your environment, knowing that you have nothing to hold onto, you are necessarily lonely, and this is how the journey forward needs to proceed. Most of the time in darkness, most of the time alone, and most of the time slightly on edge. All the time to know that you have already given up your life in order to live it.  This is how I felt that evening. It took me another 45 minutes to get back to my resort. I missed my junction but I made it back. Sometimes running, sometimes walking, never knowing what was around me. Wet and very tired, but I had not felt so alive in a long time.

Downunder Food and Anchovies

Why have I not written about food yet? Back in San Diego I go around dissecting the menu and then the individual dishes. Here I am, 7900 miles away, in a different continent, different culture, and I do not talk about food.  And there is a reason for this.

So far I have been feeding my craving for Chinese food. Both Melbourne and Sydney have significant Chinese presence and therefore great and varied Chinese food. When there is good Chinese food, there are no other options.

But now, the anchor has been released and I am floating up the north eastern seaboard of Australia, away from the urban environment that I feel so comfortable in. And perchance I am exposed to the local cuisine. 

When I travel I make it a rule to eat one salad every day, and to try something weird every day.  The weird dishes have amounted to a tahini coconut rice ball from the marihuana capital of Australia; Nimbin. To today’s pie—Australians eat a lot of flaky pastry pies—this one was chicken and asparagus. I go in a shop, I ask the attendant, wow you have a lot of pies/items/choices what is the most unique and strangest item you have. This is likely to get me in trouble one of these days, but so far, so good. Hence the tahini ball, which I initially tired to break in half, but it resisted. I had to bite into the hard ball, like a dense rice crispy ball. A concoction of rice, desiccated coconut, tahini and something brown that I could not work out. I think it is Milo (like Ovaltine) Australians put it on ice cream here. Well that is what I hope was in it.

Which brings me to my salad. So a quick lesson on caesar salad. It was not developed by any of the Italian Caesar gods in between their acts of debauchery meddling with some lettuce and cream (oh the imagination wanders aimlessly.) Or by one of the many Caesars' grateful chefs preparing the dish of lettuce to compete against braised bull testicles and sheep brains. No.

It was developed by a restaurateur Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant, who was living in San Diego but also working in Tijuana where he avoided the restrictions of Prohibition in the 1920’s.  The dressing involved (involves to this day in some continents) raw eggs, and why it must be prepared fresh. The basic recipe is romaine lettuce and croutons dressed with parmesan cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, egg, Worcestershire sauce, and black pepper.

So I ordered a chicken caesar salad in Byron Bay and the dressing is good, lettuce, crotons, and then there is a poached egg sitting atop of the bed of chicken. There is a great distrust for having lettuce overwhelm a dish. It seems like perhaps there is so much fluff on the dish and we must have more substance, more of everything but lettuce. In San Diego when I go to DZAikins I can order a salad that is 12 inches by 6 inches and that is not a family meal. So, in this salad at Byron Bay, there is maybe four roman lettuce leaves, an ample proportion of chicken breast meat, and a poached egg (perfectly done) sitting like a diamond atop of pedestal of protein.

So you would think that I would know what to expect next time. Forward two days and I am in a local pub in Harvey Bay. “Would you like anchovies?” With my salad? Only to recover quickly and say “Sure.” What have I ordered now. Again the dressing is good, a few lettuce leaves at the bottom, but two very prominent lettuce leaves sticking out of the bowl like rabbit ears waiting to be shot down. Tenderloin chicken in ample proportions, crotons, and quartered boiled egg, slivers of ham, and, true to the order, a few lines of anchovies. 

Before I go on  about the adherence to the true recipe, the addition of anchovies tasted really really good. Again I would prefer more lettuce. Vegetarians must get a bum deal here since to be a vegetarian you have to eat twice as much in volume to make up for the less dense matter. To survive and make up for all the protein and nutrient you need to consume twice the volume of a carnivore. Back to the anchovies. They tasted really good on the salad but why? This is where the bible of all bibles in cooking comes in…On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee. Worchester sauce, one of the main ingredients of the caesar sauce,  is made from anchovies. So the idea of combining the dressing with its main ingredient is not that alien.

Every Caesar salad so far has been different, with something new added. The last one involved a cold fried egg, which we will not dwell on. But who would have thought of combining anchovies with salad. 

The Heart of Australia

Its huge. A steel mill in Wollongong, touted as the largest manufacturing factory in the Southern Hemisphere. Bluescope. It has to be huge. This is the economic heart of Australia. It drives all the other economic parts and its heartbeat is the health of the economy. From it comes one of the most adaptable products on earth, steel. It takes iron ore, coke/coal, limestone and other elements--in most cases, from all parts of Australia--and in an enormous cauldron fuses them together to produce this commodity that drives the real economy. This is not the Wall Street smoke and mirror money, this is production. This is the basis of all economy. Not google, not facebook, not twitter. We have moved so far away from the means of production that we forget that all of the derivates, futures, all the stock market empires are based on this simple outcome...production. It is an inverted pyramid built on production. And you cannot get more basic production than steel (perhaps agriculture.) Standing 30 feet above the hot slabs coming off the line (picture) , even at that height, the intensity of the heat is unbearable. The shear size and the constant production (24/7) is a true analogy of the heart. The rhythm, the heat, the flow. How small seemingly inconsequential event have big impacts. Smoking and heart disease, and in the economy, exchange rates and the export of steel.

So it came as a surprise last week when talking with one of their workers at a BBQ that the local steel mill is closing one of its two furnaces. The exchange rate is so high that it is making steel too expensive to buy. SO they are shutting down their export side of production. Although Switzerland who faced similar export issues (not with steel) devalued their currency so that they stayed competitive, Australia remains with a very high exchange rate. But visiting the mill yesterday and seeing this enterprise in such a scale, I felt for the first time while being here, a sign of arrhythmia in the economy of Australia.