Ha! Lovely to find a fellow heathen here (here being atop the 7th floor of this warren of rooms overlooking Bangkok in a 24-hour coin-operated internet center) at 3 am. Just me, you, a clerk and 30 machines. Melatonin I am afraid is overrated as a solution to jet lag. Clocks line the room with cities and times marked on them. I think I am more keyed in to London than either New York or Bangkok right now, yes a healthy 9:30 pm.
Actually I think there are a whole host of heathen whose architecture totally mirrors their cosmogony and world view. As well as the temples of Thailand and the spirit houses people put in front of their own houses and businesses. Take for instance the Dayaks of Borneo and the tribal people of E. Timor.
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Their houses are beautiful, functional and a total representation of their understanding of the universe and their place in it. Unfortunately the Indonesians who plotted and executed the ethnic cleansing of these tribes, maybe 100,000 of them over a ten year period, burned the last remaining indigenous house some years ago so I will have to describe it to you (if you already know this, forgive and delete--just a talkative person here who can't spend another minute in bed.). The ground floor represents the lower world. The animals have a home here. Beautifully carved poles hold up the upper floors. The next floor represents the middle world the realm of people (was Tolkien attuned or what. Its all just shamanism) where ordinary life goes on, reached by decorative ladders. From here on the roof gets very steep, almost like an A-frame, 'swoopy', as we/they reach for the stars and the realm of the gods. They too have carvings like the nagas, half birds, half spirits that mark corners, where matter gives way to space. At the top of the poles supporting flooring are a kind of mask carving, a house protector, half animal, half god, the mythical singha, or a relative of winged garuda, the man eagle. There are nomadic tribes in Africa who need only to put up four intricately carved boards at the four corners of their encampments and intruders know to stay away, that these people are not to be messed with. I still own a door, one solid carved lab of teak, god knows how old, that graced a Dayak chief's house in Borneo. I will send you a picture when I return. In the middle is the face of Aso, the dragon dog, big head honcho deity, surrounded by forest spirits and male and female deities, all with tendrils/growing tips in place of fingers. OK, so why are we so boring, or am I missing something. Ah, maybe I am just not operating on the right definition of heather. Yes, you are probably talking about our nature as basic unbelievers.
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The last few days I've been as far off the beaten path as off-line can be. And have been rocked by it, in all senses, both shaken up and comforted. A two hour ride from Phnom Penh over rutted roads and scary bridges, Wat Opot is an amazing exercise in compassion.
It is run in partnership by a Cambodian Buddhist and a non-denominational Christian Viet Vet who was fired from every job he ever had and has created this extremely loving commune/community that takes care of people this society loves to shun: people with aids and the children left behind when they die. It sounds grim but it is anything but that. The neighboring Buddhist monastery's abbot donated all the land. There was nothing on the land. Now there is much including school, weaving center, dining hall, hospice, and more in process. All functional, not fancy.
At first, when I was spending my first 2 days in Bangkok I was sorry I had not gotten to any of the big temples, but now I am happy that my first temple taste was at the Wat of the poorest of the poor. No gilding and magnificent carving. Just wood, paintings all over the walls and the carved spirit-birds/'dragon-nagas' on every roof edge sending prayers up to the heavens (though nobody but me seems to know or talk of this. I don't get it), even through cracked and missing tiles. The abbott, drifting towards our little group of 4 adults and a handful of laughing boys, seemed so young to me. And very thrilled because he had just received 50,000 brand new glazed roof tiles and could re-cover all the rooftops.
Wayne, the unlikely sincere but jovial, principled but hippie like founder of all this (and somewhat suspect by traditional christians and born-agains, who do not like the fact that he does not believe that anyone who does not accept Christ is going to hell in a hand basket), told us that as recently as 1990 there were only 14 monks left alive in the whole of Cambodia. Egads. Yes, the thought of what these people must have undergone, primarily because of actions of our own gov't.. is chilling, but I focus on what is happening now.
And what is happening in this little corner of the world is astounding. Everyone who comes is being given the best of care and latest life expanding drugs, adult and child. No one dies without someone else being there to hold his her hand. Children are living beyond expectation. Mothers in extreme depression after loss of a child have taken on the care of new orphans and love their lives again. Yikes. Every night they do chanting at this little shrine in the crematorium. Then the kids wave to the urns and photographs of the ones who have passed and say goodnight mama, goodnight papa. It sounds a touch ghoulish but it feels both normal and comforting. They are being taken care of. And boy do they love being hugged.
My favorite time so far: Gail, Marilyn, and I were sitting quietly in a little screened porch. I was drawing Gail while we talked and two of the kids came in to see what we were doing. Before it was over, we had a dozen kids inside (all sharing well with others, which apparently is not always the case), I had drawn four of them, passed out paper and colored pencils, they were making drawings for us, we were singing songs to each other, and they had learned to sing the first three lines of row row row your boat. Well, you know what that felt like. It is so easy to just love them. (Some of them had been their parents last primary care-givers. Apparently, Cambodian men like to go to prostitutes when they have something to celebrate, and had no idea ?? of the eventual consequences. Homosexuality is a non-issue. Now the problem is mostly women. The men have died.)
My other favorite part so far was getting up at dark black 5 am and taking an hour hike down a country road and up 550 steps to a mass of 9th century ruins of a Hindu temple. (the hilltop also occupied by a monastery). Honestly, it felt so similar to Macchu Picchu (and Sekkara, that old step pyramid in Egypt) to me that I could hardly believe it. What is it about us as humans that we need to carve out blocks of stone with immaculate precision and decorate them with loving images of the divine in which to house our hope and awe and respect. Seeing it pocked and overgrown, roofs crumpled and missing, I had to wonder how much damage was caused by time and how much by those non-existent bombing raids we (no, not we) in the form of our govt. made to avoid what? some hypothetical victory by the Vietnamese? Its just all too obvious that whoever made the decisions that were made did not think this country was populated by human beings. I'm sure none of them had watched families feed their children, build their houses, harvest their rice.
It is lovely to be here at rice harvest time. Even the knife tool they use to cut the stalks are beautiful as well as intelligently designed. As are the baskets used, the way they pile the refuse, the chaff, the grain, the way each family does its work in its own front yard, the wooden wheeled ox carts that haul it, the wooden pumps that give them water, the paintings on even the simplest houses, the fences made half of bamboo and half of stalk that turn into fruit bearing tree. Imagine, fences that grow and feed you. Babies running naked in the street--not lots, just an occasional happy tush. And at the bottom of the walk up to the ruins, squats a tooth worn crone over and over again lifting her adz like pick and pounding stone into gravel. She smiles and her reddish stumps gleam. Know that we sang the sun up that morning at Phnom Chisor and that just after us came a young (of course) saffron robed monk walking and chanting, holding his text leaves fluttering in the wind, paying no attention to us at all or to the even younger monks appearing, spitting, waking up, returning back to their temple and dormitories.
Phnom Chisor
We have left Wat Opot behind now, physically only, and have landed in Siem Riap, the place of Angkor Wat. Tomorrow at 4;30, we will make our first foray (by car and not by foot alas--a totally different scale here) and then we will walk and sing up again the sun.
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I am out of the hinterlands now, much as I regret leaving the modest temples, the amazingly cheerful orphans, et al, and am now exploring Siem Reap, the land of so many temples whose images are burned into our brains from National Geographic photos that the real live sharp in front of your face experience of climbing those steep well worn steps in morning light to see giant buddha faces and shiny apsara dancing goddess breasts in ever receding rows in front of you, not to mention doorway after doorway leading to new high and low relief vistas, well it's all overwhelming as well as beautiful. I do my best to ignore other tourists (I am them after all) and the gaggles of smooth-faced young purveyors of trinkets (though some are so strikingly sweet I buy something from them anyway). As impactful as Angkor Wat is, I think I am even more awed, at the end of a long day of climbing, crawling, and exploring, by the temple complex that was the one most recently discovered and the least restored, with the roots of giant kapok trees twisting their fingerlings between crevasses of well formed rock until they crack and whole rooftops so artfully crafted and arched (so similar in construction to the temples in the Yucatan and Macchu Picchu--are we talking 100th monkey phenomenon?) lie broken on the ground like a tower of blocks one of my autistic students might have pushed over in a fit of destructive pique.
Of course it has nothing to do with destruction, only the impulse to grow, started when a handful of birds ate a piece of fruit, flew over the jungle, and shat out some seeds nine hundred odd years ago. Is life patient and persistent or what. Or Wat?
:-) Hmmm... Can you tell I am fatigued as well as over stimulated?
In the middle of the night last night I had such a wicked bad headache I thought I was going to die and started feeling sorry for my friends as they would have to deal with how to return my body. Then I thought return to where, to what, why not just put me in the crematorium with all the ashes of the orphans' moms and dads. A half hour and 2 Advils later and I was a new and probably sleeping person, but the whole experience has left me ever more grateful for everything, even for my overstuffed suitcases--how can one pass up a lovely small bronze Khmer head for $6 or even care that it is a reproduction?
(to be continued)
Hoi An
I am a little sorry to be getting ready to leave this wonderfully small scale modestly beautiful eminently walkable town on the South China Sea (it does something to the inside of my mouth to even say those words. I don't know why, but I got a little breathless putting my toes in the water bubbling with surf at dusk tonight, watching the full moon rise huge and pale behind two pale mountains so smoggy they did not reach the sea but started out in sky). It felt like a little treasure, Hoi An, with great peeling layers of color on the walls of colonial and earlier architecture. Woodcarvers, stonemasons and fisherman are everywhere, not to mention weavers and tailors.
I was happy to be done with the smog and oh too urban rush of Saigon, a busy city not even mitigated by expected charm of french ''colonialness'', all refaced/defaced reformed/deformed into modern late 20th century office and apartment towers. Yes, very nice very frequent parks with lots of trees which would definitely make the city livable but, ah, give me Hoi An any time.
How can you not love a town that celebrates the full moon every month, the whole town, with little orchestras playing indigenous music, hanging red and yellow lanterns everywhere, streets closed to motorcycles, and altars set up in doorways with two candles, flowers, incense, food and fruit? And speaking of music, how is this for dislocation? I am walking along the river admiring the colored lanterns on my way to a roof top terrace cafe when I hear the sound of a violin.
Moon Festival lanterns - Hoi An
Then I see them, a large seated circle of ten men, maybe two of them western,the rest Vietnamese, and 'oh-my-goddess', what is the violinist playing? Who could possibly make this up? He is playing Havanagila! It makes me want to dance. And shake my head. I restrain myself. Later, after my travel companions head back to the hotel and bed, I join the men, sitting a respectful distance away on a large cement step and sing along with them, harmonizing, even though I have not a clue about what they are singing. I just know it is heartful and romantic. I could be in Oaxaca, or San Miguel, or at the dock on Tarpon Basin in Key Largo, singing and having a bonfire. It feels the same. It feels like home.
This morning on the river I got to see a new kind of net fishing and fisherman who do their work sitting in the middle of a round bowl-like woven basket. I am just amazed at the creativity of people without money who figure out what they have to do to make the world a place they can harvest. Interestingly enough, all of the boats have eyes painted on the bow. What a good idea. Tomorrow we move on to Marble Mountain and from there to Hue and the Perfumed River. The names call me as much as the history.
Still, I am starting to think about home again.
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Wonderful last full day today though, most of it either on the back of a very nice young man's moto(rcycle) taking me around, the rest hiking to and visiting temples, tombs, palaces, or bunkers.
How do we hunker down? -- that is the question. Do we dig deep and plant a flower, sculpt stone and erect a stupa, build higher and create a seven tiered stone monument, a giant mausoleum, acres of palaces with stone guards and room for lots of courtesans in the afterlife, do we make space for a simple tiny urn of ash, or make a non-creative crater of agent orange'd wasteland?
I have watched a Vietnamese funeral take place over two days, the first mostly consisting of the casket covered with flowers being attended by men in white robes and headbands, with those wispy beards and cheekbones worthy of porcelain sculpture, pounding on the drum and gongs every half hour just a little ways down the street from our guesthouse in Hoi An, followed by a tuneful parade the next day with the family snapping more photos than the tourists.
One of the places I visited today had a huge Quan Yin set into the top of a hill that could be seen almost a mile away. Can you picture a Quan Yin as tall as a football field is long? In 1969 all the local villagers on this hill had the same dream. Quan Yin came to them and told them to leave their village as quickly as possible. The Americans would be coming and dropping more bombs than could be counted. The villagers left immediately. Then the bombs came and the village was destroyed. When the people eventually came back they built this small temple and tall monument. Every year on February 19th, her birthday, people come here in droves to pray and give thanks to her. Shivers.
Here in Vietnam interestingly enough, even the catholic church's cemeteries and temples look vietnamese, pagodas and all. Same same just different. I can't tell you how much that phrase covers here in Asia. It has become one of our catch phrases, almost as good as the young lama's prophecy in Bhutan which I still find helpful every day, i.e. "what you lost is where you left it". :-)
Well, tomorrow morning I fly to Saigon and in the afternoon to Thailand, the next morning to Miami via Japan and Chicago. Yikes. This has been as full a trip as can be and will need lots of processing.
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I can barely believe I am actually checked in at Saigon airport, sipping capucchino and having a go at one last of seemingly endless varieties of spring roll. Miracle of miracles, they will send my luggage on to the states even though I am spending the night in Bangkok and re-boarding to Miami tomorrow. I was having nightmares about logistics.
The only thing I could imagine that would have made this trip better would have been an extra day or two in each destination with more of a chance to be and breathe than do. I would love to take just a backpack with inks, brush and water and spend hours at my favorite wats and paint paint paint. As it was I could just photo photo photo with a good amount of sitting in both awe and meditation--only way for me to get out of tourist head. Did I tell you that I have found my tribe? One of them anyway. At Bayonne, there are 54 stone towers each with a giant buddha head facing each of the four directions.
Bayonne hillside
This will be my first painting project. They all have my, or I have their, lips.
I am thinking of writing up a half satiric travel book-- OTT Touring ...
(oops, gotta get ready to board)
© Gloria Avner