Out of Blogger Contact

As far as I know, I'll be away from A Backpack and a Keyboard for at least the next week while I pack up, say goodbye, and meditate in the woods.

~^_^~

Four Hours in Burma
Four Hours of Meditation

No, I didn't spend all four hours of my time in Burma meditating, but the trip was very meditative. I crossed the border early with my new haircut and lack of sunscreen and couldn't shake the man who wanted to show me around town. Through the scorched earth of a border cleared of trees "to stop the drug traffickers" (what? governments use the roads) I took the guide up on his offer to show me some pagodas.

Smack in the center of the clearcut Thai-Burmese joint venture mango and orange plantations and government bamboo housing projects were three brand new shimmering temple monasteries. (Pagodas cancel out the evil and greed of the living rich in Burma, ensuring that they'll at least be reincarnated as something as good as human form--ie, avoid the lower levels of hell. These pagodas were funded by the goverment, an institution with enough blood on its hands to send even its immigration officers into the realm of hungry ghosts).

The guide and I paid homage to the abbot of the monastery and visited the second in command. He asked me about my circumstances and offered me the key to a meditation room built into the hill under the main pagoda. I stooped into the room and got under the bird cage of a mosquito net for a good hour of meditation where the only sense contacts I made beyond my body were the smells of fresh concrete and the buzzing of thwarted paper wasps and mosquitos.

After meditation, I found my guide sleeping under the pagoda and we went back to the gathering hall to share in an ordination feast. I was not aware of meeting the newly robed monks, but I sure enjoyed the vegetarian spoils of their celebration--and the betel nut stained smiles of their superiors.

Arms red from the mean hot season sun, I say goodbye to my friends in this dusty border town and put possessions in my backpack. One step follows the other. Again and again.

Not For the Weak
My First Haircut in Over a Year

I told him I wanted to do it right then.

"But no! You won't look like Jesus any more," he said.

No matter. The nine inches and beard had to go. There was no sense wasting my time any longer brushing out the tangles, pulling it back to keep it out of my eyes, waiting for it to dry, or any of the other hastles. I asked him to take me to whoever cuts his hair. I told him it didn't matter how his barber cuts it--I'm going to shave my head in a few days on the new moon anyway. (That's when my meditation probably begins (oh how I've learned to use the word probably)).

So we get on the motorbike and a minute later I'm in a dinky shop with a toothless Thai man pointing at posters of Asian boy bands. My Karen office assistant and I are trying to tell the barber that I want a cross between the kittenish fluff ball on the left and the Eminem clone on the right. I end up with neither. And like I said, I didn't care. Just as long I don't look like a hippie.

The haircut cost a dollar.

For another twenty-five cents he threw in the most painfull straight-edge razor shave of my life. He tiled the chair back and I stared at the ceiling in terror as he grinned and scraped, grinned and scraped. I manifested (imagined?) memories of past lives' tooth pulling experiences from similar positions.

I came out looking like a bloody half shaved medical rat.

No matter.

I went to wandering, bought a corn waffle and a slushy orange drink thing from the corn waffle and slushy orange drink thing lady in the market, delivered some raised funds to the funny vo-tech trainer man in the nearby town, hitchhiked back (winning the driver's favor so greatly by having him drop me off at the temple to teach my monks that he gave me a tomato drink) and had a class with my saffron-robed fellows. We talked about temple dogs--those pour wretches of creatures. After class I meditated as usual. While inside the temple, the heavens opened and it began to rain. The ground heaved and I made a temporary pact with the temple dog that neither of us would bite the other as the power flickered and the heat rolled back.

The monks told me the rainy season had begun.

I've heard that before. I also heard that it only rains three times here:

June, July and August.

I Never Intended to Stay Till the End of the Conference...
But Since You Brought the Humvee

I went to the secret location yesterday morning with the intention of burning data to CD. I missed the truck back to my house that evening and ended up staying with the conference delegates at a little resort. That night arguments ensued, John Denver was spontaneously sung, understandings were reached, toothbrushes were loaned, and fans evaporated sweat from many an overheated human body.

In the morning, after a short meditation in my sweltering 6:30 am hotel room, I walked to the river and sat along the bank. At my feet, I noticed a plant with dime-sized pink flowers like puffs of pink cotton candy. The leaves recoiled and pinched together at my touch. I had discovered a kind of carnivorous tamarind tree, miniature tamarinds and all! Splendid!

In the water I noticed a dazzling aquatic scene. Sitting as quietly as possible in the blazing sun of the white-drenched morning, I saw a crab scurrying along the riverbed. Dragonflies were getting it on. Lizards peaked out from behind dry leaves. Skeletal fish chased after bugs and with a wave of my arm, I could send them scattering. I was reliving my childhood--if you transplant the tropics to Michigan (oh, I shudder to think...)

As a kid, I was one to spend every daylight moment trompsing through the network of swamps and woods behind my parents house. I'd get home from school, take off my shoes and pull on thigh-high rubber boots. I spent hours observing life, pushing a boat through the muck, building tree houses, or otherwise living without a clock. It instilled me a love of nature that never flees. It's also given me a need to balance my city existence with frequent trips to the country. Without biodiversity--without the awe of nature full-on--life gets me down.

The conference started soon after a quick breakfast. Over fifty people from all over Thailand, Bangladesh and India attended to plan the future of my organization. It was a miracle of ethnic solidarity, with over 20 of Burma's 60 or so ethnic groups represented.

I again missed the truck back to my house.

I read some books.

I went to meditate in the woods.

When I came back, our conference was under military occupation. The soldiers were following the prime minister's decree to shut down all Burmese political opposition activity inside Thailand (so he can make business deals with the Burmese junta). At that moment, my third chance for a ride back to town materialized and my housemate said, "you'd better get in the truck right now."

As I went to get my bag, the facilitator broke for the morning. My housemate was sucked into translating for the cops. The Thai taxi truck driver made a quick exit as the stream of army and police personnel grew thicker.

We decided there was nothing much to do but eat lunch while the negotiations took place. The twenty five or so local police officials prevented us from leaving. Before long tens of thousands in local currency had changed hands and we were on our way back home, conference aborted.

The Burmese reacted calmly to the news. We packed up the computer and now we're back where we started. I'm back to the familiar, like evening jogs where I run by the same house blaring Thai rock next to the same Thai temple amplifying xylophone music. The same eyes stare transfixed at me from behind white-caked faces. The same Rolling Stone song I've heard thirty times plays in the computer room--"You Can't Always Get What You Want"

Experts Agree...
Everything is "Normal"

It may not feel like it in Thailand, but an article in the Bangkok Post two days ago assured me that everything is "normal". When asked about the high temperatures in this province, "experts" "agreed" that it was silly to "worry". They said these record high 42 degree Celsius temperatures days were actually reached two years ago. Normal! It seems obvious enough to me that this means the experts don't know what they're talking about. I can't wear a pair of pants for more than a few hours without accumulating huge salty sweat stains around my waist.

Luckily the heat has broken a bit today. Last week it rained for the first time since I arrived three months ago and then the temperatures climbed even higher. I thought I was just tired from all my running around, but that feeling of exhaustion was the baking of my eyeballs as waves of asphalt-heated air washed over me while on my bike. I hold out hope that the rainy season will start soon.

I haven't been able to update lately because I have been shuffling and reshuffling and crawling with ants and without much net time. My associates here suddenly dispanded a few days ago for a huge conference that had been in the planning for months and I learned about a few days before hand. This brought a number of changes to my schedule.

For one, last week ended up being my last week of classes and now I'm just teaching a few of the people who have stayed to watch over the house while the rest are in their secret location. The office staff took the computer array to the conference--again without warning. Hence, no net time at home. I should be used to the miscommunication that happens when several languages are involved and no one is delegated to communicate.

I still don't know where I'm going or what I'm doing in the next weeks and months. I wait as details materialize. I talk to people. I make plans and they fall through. All I know is that I'm going to a monastery to meditate in one week's time. That's as far as anything is planned. It really bothers me to live without a plan. My life up to graduation from university was nothing but a set plan. Now that life asks me to weigh paths instead of specifics, I look for distractions from the deliberations of my immdiate future. I try to live in the moment while I wait for results, make decisions and travel into the unknown. It's difficult to give up dreams, even stupid dreams. Dreams are some of the hardest things to give up.

Radicalism, Understanding and Silence
From a Burmese Monk Who Spent Most of His Time in the Woods

"When your thoughts become radical and you do not want to be misunderstood, you become silent, or you will say things that you are not really interested in saying. You say things that get near to what you want to say but you say it in such a way that people don't understand what you're saying. Sometimes you are happy that they don't understand what you are saying. Why do you want to express your thoughts? That is another attachment. If you let go of that attachment there will be silence and peace."
--Sayadaw U Jotika, from "Snow in the Summer," his collected letters.

If only I could remember this.

If I'd been in Bangkok this Week...
Songkran on Koa San Road

Here's a site that gives you an idea of what Songkran looks like in Thailand.

A Classroom Slip-Up Worth Noting
Changing the Name of the Government

The current manifestation of the Burmese military dictatorship calls itself the "State Peace and Development Council" or SPDC.

One of my students always calls it the SPCD instead. All the other students laugh and he continues talking unawares.

Since this one student slips up every time, one of my other students came up with a hopeful new acronym to cover for him. That student says he really meant: "State Peace and Constitutional Democracy".

I added that we should call it a Democrazy and he agreed. What with opposition National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's probable release in the middle of next month, we may be well on our way to seeing this craziness transpire. For now, the SPCD live only in my classroom.

So it Begins
Mobile Phone in a Ziplock Bag, Squirt Guns at the Ready, or, "Today the Lord of the Songkran Comes Down From the Heaven"

Start the Riot: Two nights ago, the other volunteers and I had our own rip-roaring start to Songkran, Thailand's traditional New Year's celebration (really a week of drunken revelry, cancelled classes, water splashing, and Buddhist reverence).

The evening started as nights of revelry often do: at the local bar.

I was discussing Wittgenstein over a game of Backgammon when the local constable arrived. He was looking for a man with one eye who'd last been seen in the vicinity of the gem market...

Oh wait, no, I was trying to convince everyone that we should go to the carnival and ride the bumper cars. Dave had gotten everyone to dress in their finest, so plentiful were the shirts and ties and evening dresses. These were the perfect costumes for bumper car bumping.

This Thai carnival was more fun than the Vietnamese carnival I went to, though the drag queens flushing rodents from baskets and banging on tamborines as part of a carnival game were surprisingly nowhere to be found. And also surprising, the Thai carnival was more militarized than the Vietnamese (which had no officers at all). One of the more senior fellows in our border club explained the need for so many uniforms: "these carnivals always end in a riot." Our night didn't end in a riot, but it was interrupted by a power cut.

After the bumper cars, we went to our town's only nightclub, a place unfortunately named after that big computer glitch non-even of the turn of the pseudo-millenium. (Funny, the spell out the two letters and one number in Thai script as they're pronounced).

The nightclub featured scantilly clad Thai rockstars and happy hardcore. Nights at this place also usually end in rioting, so the other foreigners say. It was my first and probably last night there. Our last few moments there ended with popcorn, trying to figure out why the power cut, Hong Kong action films, seeing a dude get glass in the eye frmo a bar fight, and dancing and singing in the streets. I spent the next day recovering. Then Songkran really began....

Two of My Friends Become Monks: Yesterday I danced at the opening morning party of Songkran. Why sit back (how could I?) when the glittering host of the morning Songkan kick-start drags you to the dusty center of the tent and takes your hand like Laxmi waltzing Vishnu to the sound of drums and steel bells? Sure I had to turn down the chicken curry, but it was just a short dozen-truck caravan ride (stopping at the road anywhere kids with buckets or old women with garden hoses stood smiling ready to douse) and then we were at the temple I teach at sitting before 20 curries prepared by the whole of my town's Buddhist community. As I chatted with one of my students, the ceremonies began.

This was a very important day. One of my housemates and two of my other local associates were donning orange robes and saying their head-shaven vows for the week of Songkran. The temple was welcoming 20 new 8-day students.

After spending the afternoon in Dhamma conversation, meditation and ice cream eating, I walked home with my squirt gun, provoking massive retaliation attacks anywhere I could just to fight back the heat.

And so Songkran continues. Yesterday Dave and I doused our students from the balconies of our house. Today the victims surely lie in wait, looking to retaliate for yesterday's guerrilla water gun and bucket attacks.

Dry for now,
~joshua

Burmese Days
Southeast Asian Seasons

"He acclimatised himself to Burma. His body grew attuned to the strange rhythms of the tropical seasons. Every year from February to May the sun glared in the sky like an angry god, then suddenly the monsoon blew eastward, first in sharp squalls, then in a heavy ceaseless downpour that drenched everything until neither ones clothes, ones bed, nor even ones food ever seemed to be dry. It was still hot, with a stuffy, vaporous heat. The lower jungle paths turned into morasses, and the paddy fields were great wastes of stagnant water with a stale, mousy smell. Books and boots were mildewed. Naked Burmans in yard-wide hats of palm-leaf ploughed the paddy fields, driving their buffaloes through knee-deep water. Later, the women and children planted the green seedlings of paddy, dabbling each plant into the mud with little three-pronged forks. Through July and August there was hardly a pause in the rain. Then one night, high overhead, one heard a squawking of invisible birds. The snipe were flying southward from Central Asia. The rains tailed off, ending in October. The fields dried up, the paddy ripened, the Burmese children played hopscotch with gonyin seeds and flew kits in the cool winds. It was the beginning of the short winter, when Upper Burma seemed haunted by the ghost of England. Wild flowers spring into bloom everywhere, not quite the same as the English ones, but very like them--honeysuckle in thick bushes, field roses smelling of peardrops, even violets in dark places of the forest. The sun circled low in the sky, and the nights and early mornings were bitterly cold, with white mists that poured through the valleys like the steam of enormous kettles. One went shooting after duck and snipe. The Burmans went to their work with muffled heads and their arms clasped across their breasts, their faces yellow and pinched with the cold. In the morning one marched thorugh misty, incongruous wildernesses, clearings of drenched, almost English grass and naked trees where monkeys squatted in the upper branches, waiting for the sun. At night, coming back to camp through the cold lanes, one met herds of buffaloes which the boys were driving home, with their huge horns looming through the mist like crescents. One had three blankets on ones bed, and game pies instead of the eternal chilcken. After dinner one sat on a log by the vast camp-fire, drinking beer and talking about shooting. The flames danced like red holly, casting a circle of light at the edge of which servants and coolies squatted, too shy to intrude on the white men and yet edging up to the fire like dogs. As one lay in bed one could hear the dew dripping from the trees like large but gentle rain. It was a good life while one was young and need not think about the future or the past."

George Orwell, 1934

Defeated in Iraq?

Check out "A Superpower Defeated" by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Continuing and Intolerable Affronts to Democracy and American Values
These are the moments that really count, folks

A suggestion: It's time for us (the people in power) to connect the dots about some recent events in United States history.

First Dot: Take a look at the far-right think tank "Project for the New American Century" that's got the ear of America's Commander-In-Chief. The main supporters of this think tank--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz--all hold positions of extreme power and influence in the Bush White House. Then examine their hopes for a "catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor" (that’s a link to ABC News, folks) which would be required to launch the kind of sustained war that's led to the second Gulf War. Remember what happened almost three years ago this September. Remember how it was used for a justification to invade Iraq.

Second Dot: Rice's testimony about the "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" memo that sent American intelligence officials into fits of "hair on fire" desk-pounding a month before 9/11 just as Bush took his first month-long working vacation. And let's not forget Richard Clarke's testimony.

Pause. Entertain the idea for a moment that there was not a string of intelligence failures surrounding 9/11, but a string of intelligence successes.

Think again about the two dots.

Remember that we were lied to about WMD as a justification for war.

Solution? We could just sit back and hope that a Democratic victory in November will turn some sort of tide against the stinking lies this administration has used to sour the old American Republic. Or we could urge our elected officials to exercise a certain rarely-used congressional power. After all, lying about war certainly falls under the category of "high crimes and misdemeanors".

Exiled Burmese Leader to be Freed
Junta to Release Aung San Suu Kyi by May

Great news for Burmese people and the world! The Burmese SPDC government announed yesterday that it may release Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and allow her party, the National League for Democacy, to attend conventions aimed at transitioning Burma to democratic rule. Suu Kyi won over 80 percent of the popular vote in 1990 elections, but the ruling military government prevented her party from taking power.

Down and Out in Florida, Costa Rica, and Yunnan, China
How Some Fellow Travellers Are Faring

One: R-Po.
Last known whereabouts: Citrus County, Florida
"Roadtripped with a few allies around the country for a 3 week span, placing over 7000 miles on my raggedy old 91 Geo Tracker, speeding between Georgia and Missouri up and down mountain roads with no brakes, then to Kentucky, back to Michigan, then New Jersey (The Landfill State) back to Georgia and then to the bowels of southern Florida.

"My traveling companions and I had a falling out, as Petie Ray, an aging hitchhiking hippie/redneck turned out to be an intolerable alcoholic. He left, and with him went our money. I was left stranded in Homestead, Florida, with my friend Mike in a rat infested, roach filled travel trailer that we squatted in. We had declared war on the rats after they had decided they could not peacefully co-exist with us, and refused to let us sleep without running over us. Most nights we would stay up late with steak knives in our grips, whipping them across to the darkened corners of the room when one of the vermin saw fit to show itself.

"I went to shower one morning, and found three roaches penned inside the tub. Last straw, baby. Luckily, the trailer had insect spray, and I let out my
unfulfilled wrath from the rats straight onto the roaches. I don't think I bothered to even try to shower after that.

"I found work, but everyone there was either psychopathic or sociopathic. The owner and most of the employee's were involved in a cult. No kidding. They were all celibate because they believed that by saving sexual energy, they could travel to the astral plane. I wanted to infiltrate the cult, but I only held my job in the cafe for two days, when the car decided to clonk out. I called The Main Street Cafe and told them I would be late, and they told me not to even bother.

"Sai La Vie. Fixed the tracker, which had lost all battery charge. It had taken us days, and then after we had fixed the damn thing, Mike saw fit to drive it directly into a blue truck as a victory dance. Right in the Discount Auto Parts store parking lot where it had set for two days and two nights. Boom.

"So, with the money I recieved under the table from the cafe and a pack of bad vibrations, we trekked to Citrus County, Florida, where I currently reside with other hostelling kin. I'm always amazed by the Hostel Network. It spans the entire country from The Rainbows to the Drainbows, from the seeking travelers to the starry eyed airy yogis that seem to drift just below the radars. Even Country Mechanics. A guy from the Hostel fixed my car for way below cost.

"The more I travel, the more I find that there really are enlightened people out there. People that have woken up. People that also call "normal day life" Babylon. People that see the lie for what it is, and do not feel rancor, but feel only the need for change through non-violence and conciousness expansion, whatever form it may take.

"I've got hope again, that maybe the world isn't going to end in one amazing fire based spectacle. Maybe the human race has a shot."


Two: Sitka
Last Known Whereabouts: Punto Blanco, Costa Rica
"i am in costa rica, i am somewhat broke, my wallet and thus my debit card was stolen by interdimensional extraterrestrials the week before i left the states.

"anyway, i have been at the yoga farm for the last week... (http://geocities.com/yogafarmcostarica) and it has been delightful, peaceful, amazing, gorgeous... view of the ocean, lots of good food, going to bed early every night, waking up around 6am every morning, giving lots of massages, spending lots of quality time getting battered by ocean waves, my energy is good and clear. i feel well, but i've been bit up by bugs and slapped around by the ocean so i´ve got the marks to bear proof of it. i will be back in the states by friday. (yippeeeee!!!!)"


Three: Jim
Last Known Whereabouts: Rural Yunnan Province, People's Republic of China
"I'm currently in rural China again till next week on a business trip. Will be back in contact by Monday with more than enough funny stories that will make you slap you knee!"