Another cycle through the calendar - from moons to harvests and on to Hallmark holidays and fiscal years; isn't it fun to measure time in neat little boxes! Even among the most cynical (oh, they are out there), a New Year is reflective and hopeful.
I am here, under the burning sun of the side of the world where the pale skin 'rang-gers* wear thongs** and budgie-smugglers*** in January. What foul and fragrant memories dance before me when I shut my eyes in the Australian afternoon? Here are a few reflections on a year enroute:
The lesson underlined and repeatedly drilled and quizzed by the strict tutor-of-travel is unpredictability. There is a limit, not far from the tip of my nose, to which my plans and forecasts cease being useful and begin being hopelessly flimsy. Largely due to internal changes that occur only moments down such a winding and foreign road, my perspective dances and twirls in the kaleidoscope of the newly-known. How can "I", now, make decisions and plans for "him", then?
The answer to this riddle of hopeless unpredictability is not a refinement of my predictions, or a hardening of will, an increase in effort or a subscription to Astrology magazines; it is an internal change - adaptability. This, my most prized gift from the silent teacher of life, is the crest jewel on my hemp-woven crown - the passive ability to adapt and release my rigid hopes and expectations.
In respects to my current life in "The West", the culture shock of the profoundly different cultures and minds in Asia hit me harder than I realized. While I was a part of the economies, societies and backgrounds of lands beyond my dreams, I could not see that there were parts of me being destroyed and re-crafted to fit in an environment full of different standards and different values. I held on to what I was for a while, threw it off radically, and went through some psychological instability as I pieced together whatever it was that resulted from my incessant jarring and slugging with the ball-hammer of a question: "Who Am I?"
The key realization, that I am many things, none of which reign supreme, has melded into the skill of adaptability. The myth that self-discovery is found out there is half true. By being out there and watching the transformations in here, identity issues clarify. What a dazzling multi-faced quartz!
This observer being transformed into the environments he observes.
Primary knowledge through the rich and infinitely circumstantial events and experiences of a real life must be the root of cultural and intellectual understanding. Secondary sources, books about life, are pen drawn maps of a flat world full of sea-dragons and missing continents. The hard thing to let go of is that a book about life can be finished. Editing on a criminal level underlies even the most thorough treatise on the throbbing vein of the modern world. The purity and fullness of every small moment is accessible through attention. Knowledge is not the resource that must be accumulated for intellectual growth, attention is. To pay attention to all the elements and broaden ones intellectual eye is to see the 'big-picture' reflected in a small concentrated globule; the universe reflected on the satin skin of a ruby pearl of blood dripping from our planet's on-flowing artery; "the universe in a grain of sand". Knowledge changes incessantly, but the skill of observation and analysis sharpens on Time's churning wheel.
I find contrasts between the big and the small peppered along the route. "Important" and "unimportant" (for what?). Is life unbearably light, freeing me to wander, or heavy and rich, a bitter-sweet molasses. What is the PLAN and what am I actually going to do next. Who am I and who am i. What is Life and what is life. In harmony, the two work like dance partners, the strong and rigid leading the flowing swan. The experiencing and the remembering me; which am I living for?
Purpose, ever illusive, is nourishment in a box-less world. But, as Dave Matthews sings, "it all adds up to nothing" - "one big nothing...one big nothing at all" - "for soon we will all have our lives swept away". So what am I, on a new year? What decision has reflection brought me too? Am I going down the wrong path, the right path, the only path? Is there something I hope to find? someone?
What am I but a man (?) defined by the stubborn trait of never turning back, even on the narrowing road much less travelled by.
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Appendix of Aussie English
* the term "rang-ger" from Orangutan; from the auburn color of the hair; AKA "ginger".
** a thong is not a floss, its a flip-flop.
*** the endearing term "budgie-smugglers" [a budgie is a parakeet] otherwise known as speedoes.
