thePlace

A delirium envelops me – from lack of sleep. The allergy I contracted from Bali added to the heaviness of my eyes.  Unsure of from what, just swelling and light peeling of the skin around my eyes.  They are the most sensitive parts of my body, the first to be afflicted whenever I expose the body to any trifling of inhospitable conditions, MSG especially.  My bothersome susceptibility is to be blamed.

 

The 7 hours of long wait seems like another life time.  I’m unredeemably stuck and very much doomed.  My first try with JAL and my last.  No more cheap flights.  The horrid flight to Bali 6 months ago is another forbidding reason not to fly JAL.  Narita is a dowdy kind of  town, a place I would not go out to.

 

I’m depleted, no mood to walk around airport shops, even if I do, my inanition would have prevented it.  I have my sun-shades on; otherwise, the glare of the shops’ spotlights would hit me like a clenched fist.   Nothing appetizing to eat – I had 3 apples since arriving in the morning. 

 

As usual the dog-tiredness would not make me sleep a bit, not in the lounge, not in this overly air-conditioned area. So, more writing.  The eyes would have to endure more misery.

 

Thinking about the qi, thinking if I should raise the vibration.  The Narita airport must be a huge block of electromagnetic field fueled by giant electrical machines.  Sifu said not to practice qi in such a place. But I feel my being incarcerated in a dark and heavy place, chained, mind clustered, heart fainting….

 

I wish qi would come and find me.  Like it first did through sifu 5+ weeks ago.  After he opened my points that day, I barely slept for 3 nights. The vibrations kept me going as if the qi in and around me have been aching to open up to each other for eternity; the flames of spontaneity once let loose, danced in eternal songs.  The dance swept me up like flying sparks, glinting, unable to stop.  ‘i’ was burning in a bright light of qi, luminous and unwillingly shining – in a blaze, burning everything. Leaving nothing, yet everything stays.

 

Everything else is inconsequential.  The void in me filled up to the brim, dreamlike, happy and full of energy.  It lasted, like a whirlwind, swept through the dry land. 

 

Those 3 days, in spite of all the last minutes activities, I found the quietness, the voidlike quietness.  If only for a brief moment, I tasted it. I knew it was the qi but didn’t confirm it with sifu until later.   As I practice, it comes and revisits me, now and again.  Not as intense, a lot more subtly – when I practice in the sough of the wind in the Space, when I am in the presence sifu’s qi (if he has the time and fancy to send me some powerful bolts), when I meditate after the qi exercises.  The feeling of lucidness, the beauty of its simplicity, the it-ness.  No more ‘the I”, no more the perceiver – just be.   And lately when I learned to spin the points half-instructedly, I accidentally floated into the void - quite a different out-of-body experience. 

 

In the Mahamudra Upadesa, Tilopa says, cut the root of mind and let consciousness remain naked, self-quieted, self-existing, luminous essence of mind is the mahamudra, the unborn essence of mind….

 

Back in Bali, in much the same bold spirit, I absorbed sifu’s emailed instructions, I imagined his words, tried to grasp the deeper meaning of his directions.  I started with Tao qi meditation daily.  When I asked him when I can learn to fly, Sifu said it would take me a year to master the Tao qi meditation.  In other words, don’t even think about it! 

 

There were bad and good days of practicing – my mind wandered off fleetingly, the chameleon on the coconut tree caught my attention, the kids ridding the buffalos down the paddy field made me laugh, etc.  There were a couple days when I had to practice in the bus, one or two other days when I could only think about practicing….

 

On 28 June, Sifu said I should add the Shaolin qi gathering exercise. 2 days later, I told him I felt the qi in my dantien was overflowing (as confirmed by the shinseh). On 30th, sifu took me to the next step of basic healing breathing exercise; he said in his typical brusque email fashion, “You can do qi healing already, now that you have qi in your dantien.”  -  I save sifu’s instruction in my laptop for references when I gnaw over the practice of qi, etc. 

 

The same day, I started sending healing qi to a friend that has inoperable cancer in the US.

 

Came first week of July, I answered sifu’s questions and gave him details feelings and steps I do.  On 11 July he asked me to spin the qi from soles to Baihui and down to palms.  Took a couple of days to digest the spinning sensation. On 13 July, I tasted the radiation of qi from my skin.

 

On 17, sifu wrote “spin the following points 1. yongguang (at your sole), the huiyin, the dantien, the middle dantien (between your breasts), the upper dantien (your third eye), and the baihui.  Keep the qi spinning at the points.  Start spinning one at a time.  After that, spin all together and keep them spinning and when you exhale, use their energy to come out of your palm.  Tell me your progress.”  I did and I accidentally floated out because of an email gap.

 

In Singaraja I had to be chauffeured to an internet café, and not every day I could have such a luxury.  Sometimes, the Place took too much of my energy, I couldn’t even face the slight discomfort of cold mandi when returned in the chilly evening wind– not just the iciness of the well water but the bites that go with it…hence the gap of instructions.

Yesterday, the day of leaving Bali, Ayu ran her hands around my body when I was spinning.  I asked her if she felt anything and if she did, what. She said with wide-eyes, ‘plak, plak, plak, kuat sekali(really strong)!”  I think she meant the feel of electricity or something like that.

 

In a breath, that’s the qi adventure thus far.  A long long way to go still, and sifu would say I having even touched the tip of the iceberg…. 

 

Now that I’ve described the feeling of qi, it’s not too unlike one of the mushroom trips I had in the Philippines.  Wanted to be alone, I walked down to the lower hill towards the sea,  meditated under the sun looking out over the powdery white white sand, the hills on the east side and the forest behind me.  Everything was lucid, an inexplicably clearness that makes one weep.  I saw the qi, the wave of energy that came upon me from the ocean, the sun, the forest…and me rising with it, being one with it…. I smiled; it was pure bliss, a little more graphic, powerful and vibrantly red.   And the message was, ‘I must learn to die….’

 

And here I’m still in the Narita airport, few more hours to go and absolutely famished!!!

Had my first vegetarian meal on route to Narita.  The boiled banana pink sauce made it look like a Japanese grimcrack souvenir that tasted much like plastic.  The hostess mistakenly brought a non - veg meal earlier : porridge with prawns, soba and fish.  Still woozy from an on - off plane sleep; I stared at it for a long while.  The little curled up unqualified deadness of those red prawns was a dim reminder that they were once living beings, now slit and broiled.  The painful vision gave me a jolt.  I hailed down the hostess and she brought me the veg meal that I requested while boarding.

 

All the same.  Plane food that barely turns off ones hunger and afterwards, hardly remember what one has just injested.

 

Became a vegetarian on 23 June 2005.   That day I came down to Sanur from Singaraja to meet Ibu Made,  a long time friend of Sifu, whom he thought could be of help in one of my quargmires in Bali.  That night I walked the beach filled with seafood restaurants.  I was craving for sashimi. The hunger for a great fresh fish meal after not eating for the whole day was quite over powering.  I walked passed Ryoshi, Sakura and a bunch of Japanese sounding restaurants.  An atypical desire to fight the fish-eating ravenous prevailed over, I opted for a meager organic salad.  Conceivably, I did that in bereavement for the 9 koi fish (out of the 10 that I bought for the Place) that died on me the previous days.

 

The want for a fish meal followed me back to Tom's house.  A power that held me, made me restless, unfulfilled.  The quietus came when I decided to meet it head-on : the root of it, the how and why the desire for good food has been such a driving force.

 

My life thus far has been the 'live to eat' sort.  Besides travelling for months, my money has been spent on foods and drinks.  Sampling champagnes, cheeses, wines and great European foods for almost a year, restaurants reviews whenever I return to the US, friends that take me miles away to try out ever-innovative delicious Malaysian foods when I am back in KL.... A neurotic game to look for the unreachable through the fleeting pleasures found with senses overloading and over-indulged belly.

 

While meditating in the sitting area next morning, a weird and wonderful yearning came over me - I came to the decision that vegetarianism is part of the path.

 

No more meat and no more fish. Haven't missed them since.

 

Monroe almost cried when she heard the news - no more companion for her restaurants binge in SF!

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Anyway， It has been a year of change. Quit alcohol in May while drinking in a bar in KL this last trip. The sorry sight of drunken men shook me and I thought it was time to stop.  No longer has the desire to be a part of the scene. 

 

The usual buzz from smoking left me quite mysteriously when I returned from NZ in April.  The vagary and caprice of senses overloading are now null and gone.

 

Perhaps all these are preparing me for something, for the Place, for the qi maybe....

 

Leaving Bali in 2 days. These past days were like a blur of hunger, a time without roots – scrambling to get everything done, one last chance to stir the Place into the right direction. 

 

One thing after another, I try to make quick decisions.  Where each window is, what material to be used, where the toilet bowl should be placed, the constant adjustments to be made, when and where to plant what, how plants should be grouped, things to be prearranged, Sifu’s instructions to be translated, laminated and posted on the wall for the gardeners…. Every little detail has to be attended to.  Being the sole decision maker, though physically drained, black eyes and all; there is no time for self-absorbed fretting and whimpering.

Not that I know what I’m doing, it’s just that no one else cares and knows better.  I care, so I pretend that I know – pure own-sensical way. 

 

The rocks underneath the house have been cleared, it took 10 days.  Made has agreed to a smaller profit, I have given up wooden floor and settled for terracotta - a difference of about $800. 

 

It’s the garden; the garden is the sole thing that would leave my heart hanging in Bali, dark souled. Time seems to have stopped when it comes to see any progress out of the 5-week hard slog. Everything moves in snail-pace.  The soil is still flaky when touched and slippery mud when rained on.  The few trucks loads of sawdust have vanished without a trace due to the recent downpours.  The 7-truck loads of dung seem like a layer of thin grease measly floating in the sea of denying dry hard earth.  The condition of gloom and dislocation only thickens when I found out that earthworms were no where to be found when a hole of more than 40 cubic cm is dug (as instructed by Sifu). 

He says the land is barren and much time, effort and money are needed to rebuild the soil.  I know he is right.

 

I’m still learning about the soil and experimenting with different means to build the soil.  Two piles of compost are still struggling to survive, and won’t be ready for at least another month or so. The success of bio and the bacteria making are yet to be revealed. 

The gardeners’ long-drawn-out way of working makes everything seems unbearable….I give them three months to plant the things I wanted, mostly local indigenous insects repelling herbs and medicinal plants and usable grass and eatable plants for fencing and protection from erosion. The grass is going to cost more than $500 for a mere 500 sq m. The grass guys are coming today; it will take them 3 days to place the grass in the ground. The grass is to be guided zealously and be multiplied to the rest of the garden as ground cover. 

 

I have pleaded for Made to personally take charge of it and not to leave it to Ketut, the supervisor he hired.  I want to see green when I return!!

 

The maximum budget for the final completion is $4,000.  The money put out for the garden to date, is slightly more than $3,000.  Not including the pool and the 2 Bales that I have paid Made, which totaled about $9,000.  Thus far besides the lower fish pond, the garden is like a black hole sucking up all my energy and not much to show for. 

 

Indistinguishably there is something quite inhuman, discouraging, about this landscape, especially in the full glare of the heat haze.  Although I love them so, those desolately beautiful great big rocks add to the gloom – they have the first say where the plants can be placed. 

 

My edginess and my desire to see it green, fertile, and filled with sublimely beautiful tropical trees and flowers…make the current condition all the more a mournful exasperation.

 

The half-cut cheerless cloves trees are determine to stay forever.

 

The excitement is not gone, only the weariness of mind and body has taken over momentarily.