Monkey Quote: Episode 3

"You may run from tigers, but where can you hide from your own fear? Desire is unquenchable - you can only free yourself from it."

Sans Kansas

In the past week I’ve done the entire train circuit of Taiwan - heading to Hualien, down to Kaohsiung and Tainan and now back in Taipei where my Teacher Training begins tomorrow. It’s been a search for a place that I can call home for the next year.

The journey so far has certainly had its moments. In my search for something that felt a little bit normal I reached out for McDonalds and KFC – anything to comfort me from the feeling of ‘We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.’

My time in Bali was like living in an Ashram in many ways – all the physical world elements taken care of. Someone to clean up after you, wonderful food everywhere that would be delivered to your house for very little money. With the outer world taken care of so sweetly it left plenty of time for inner exploration.

Dealing with the shock from being pulled out of that world has been a struggle. Turning to KFC was a mistake. I think I found the Colonel’s secret ingredient – laxatives. The Colonel’s colon cleanse put me in the position every traveller knows – the mad dash for the nearest toilet.

Still, after this I knew beyond any chance of mistaking it that I was travelling again… Funny how the old dire rear marks the start of a new journey for me.

That day, feeling worse for wear, I went out in Kaohsing to check out a movie. If the Colonel wasn’t going to help me I knew Hollywood would. At the cinema I had a couple of hours to kill before anything was showing and ran into a couple of American baseball players. These two were like giants, especially against the backdrop of the Taiwanese.

Jay, a big black bald man from Mississipi and Nate, a big white diesel engine from Utah. The 3 of us shared pizzas, pasta and red wine and some laughs before heading into check out… ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’… Hmmm... Another look at glorified relational neuroses. And a chick flick for sure. But just what I needed to switch off my busy, tired mind.

Tainan has been one of the highlights so far. The old capital of Taiwan before Taipei took over at the turn of the century. Confucius Hotel was my sanctuary as I learned from the mistake of a sleepless night in a 6 bed dorm room. Before you pass Go, sometimes you’ve gotta stay at Park Avenue.

Monkey Quote: Episode 9

"Your work is to discover your work. Then, with all your heart, to give yourself to it. No one purifies another"

(This is the section of the blog where I will be taking quotations from the 80s TV show, Monkey)

Getaway

So, I’m up in the North East of Taiwan having a look at the spectacular Taroko Gorge, famous for its secret waterfalls and marble canyons, when I stop in for a coffee at the central base. I see a little crew of unmistakable Australians and think to avoid them. That is until I notice it’s Catriona Rowntree!

To those of you who aren’t Australian, Catriona does a show in Australia called Getaway. Before that, however, she was the focus of my most intense teenage celebrity crush. She used to be the sexy voice on the radio and was on the TV whenever I got home from school, hosting a sparkling piece of entertainment called ‘What’s Up Doc?’

So I sat down to talk to her when the others had left her alone. Keeping my cool I saddle up and ask, ‘Are you Christina Rowntree?’ Shit. ‘Catriona’ she answers, ‘yeah.’ And so the conversation begins. But the teenage boy in me just couldn’t hold it together long enough to ask for her hand... Besides which, later I would find out that she got MARRIED last year! Ah, the lost opportunities…

She has been travelling the world getting paid to do what she loves for the last 10 years. She said that she knew what she wanted to do with her life in High School. Then she just went out and did it... I admire that, perhaps because it’s the polar opposite of from my experience of life. I got out of school and studied Commerce for 5 and a half years and am only now beginning to get a sense of this thing called 'purpose.'

Anyway, if you’re in Australia look out for Getaway’s Taiwan episode coming up…

Day Wan

With about 2 hours to go before landing in Taiwan it suddenly occurred to me - I should try to learn a little Mandarin... So I thought back to the Matrix, how Neo plugs himself into a program and seconds later his eyes open with, 'I know Kung Fu'. With this in mind I plugged myself into my iPod, closed my eyes, let my eyelids have a bit of a flutter for effect, and...

I still don't know Mandarin!

Nor do I have any idea what those pretty pictures are supposed to mean - they tell me that around here those pictures are 'words'. Fascinating!

One thing I learned from my Mandarin podcast is that the Chinese tend to talk in proverbs. I like that. Little stories to explain situations away. It means that you could turn to your friend and say, 'Never pull on your shoes in a melon patch' and he'd completely understand what you're talking about (apparently that one means don't act suspiciously if you want to avoid being suspected).

But for now I'm far away from talking in tales. I'm focusing on avoiding the time bombs that are inherent in learning this language. The word 'ma' means mother, numb, horse and swear depending on which tone you use. Ticking tongue bombs...

Still, there are advantages to being the dumb foreigner. It affords me far more time to amuse myself with thoughts without the risk of someone interrupting them. It also lets me view a completely different world without any understanding of what's going on. Much the same way that you look at an ant farm and imagine how they all know what they're doing and where to go next...

All in all I'm impressed with Taipei though, as far as big cities go. It's clean. There are about a billion scooters running around and they treat them like bumper cars - scratched up to the hilt. They seem to stack them one upon the other to save space and drive them on the sidewalk. It gives the place the feel of a Theme Park, if it weren't for the seriousness...

Upon Noodles's recommendation I tried out the chocmilk, and it is up there with Masters Choc in Perth. Thanks for that Noods, it made my first day in a strange new world far more tasty...

My dad, Harry, is known for his understated pieces of wisdom. On one ocassion, when I went to his house for dinner, he had a word written on his whiteboard. It was the word 'Improvise'. And that, my friends, is exactly what I'll have to do as the adventure begins anew tomorrow.

And that's my story...

Bali has been an amazing place to live for the last 13 months. Looking at these stories it would seem that it has been nothing but adventurous times for me. That's what I don't like about blogs.

There have been plenty of hard times that I haven't written about here. Times that have felt like the edges of depression. Big wide spaces in between the episodes that are often so much harder to organise around than the episodes themselves...

Well, as soon as I learn to write about the 'not stories' I will let you know. In the meantime...

It's off to Taiwan. A steady job and income to replace the endless amounts of 'free' time. And I'm excited about that prospect. Of life becoming somewhat more normal and routine.

I guess it is such that you want what you don't have. But that may not be such a bad thing. Perhaps that want itself is what keeps us balanced, always drawn back to the middle.

One More Bali Opening...

Bali held one more story for me to experience. It was in the form of nothing but the greatest teacher of all – love. But not so much in the romantic form, more in the form of breaking myself open with the help of another. The way I saw it at the time was that what I thought was my heart was actually my heart’s shell. And like an egg it needed to be violently broken open from the inside to release the life within.

The person I am writing about is very private, and as this is a public blog I will respect that by keeping her anonymous... We got to know each other over the year and it was through her that I learned the most about astrology. As time went on we grew closer until somewhere in the midst of November we decided to be together.

It was certainly no normal affair. New levels of playfulness met expansive vulnerability. With her help I could see how disturbing it is to be absent with someone in the midst of intimacy. She called me out on that and let me see what is truly required to be with a person. And it's simple... Just the absence of absence.

We broke up around Christmas and brokethrough in the middle of January into something else entirely. I still don't particularly know what the 2 of us have now. But I feel blessed to have met her and grateful for whatever is to come.

The story of Alice...

There is one more story that can’t be missed. And I will go back into this blog to squeeze this amongst all that has been said so far about my time in Bali.

It’s the story of Alice…

In January, 2008, I went to the Gilis of Indonesia, off the mainland of Lombok. I was looking for a way to shake myself off and start again. On my first night in town I went to a bar with a guy I was travelling with and we started chatting up a few young Englishwomen.

As I’m talking to this girl on my right another woman waltzes up on my left and says, ‘Seriously, I think it would be rubbish.’

Meet Alice.

Alice is a straight-talking-no-nonsense-part-time-bitch-part-time-lover. She has possibly the swiftest sense of humour I’ve come across and is one of the crazier people on the ledge I’ve met.

We kicked off our friendship with a mushroom trip. Days later we met up again (read: I stalked the island searching for her) for a DVD date and a little bit of sexual exploration. A few days later I went back to Ubud and we left it at that.

6 months later, in the story of Otis and Lulu, we picked up where we left off. Or perhaps a few parsecs on from where we left off. For 10 days we shared romance, laughter, sexual connection and chemistry, first on the Gilis again and then back in Ubud together.

We entertained the concept of a relationship. But around about August a 36 hour nightmare journey to the Gilis showed us that we’re better off as friends.

Now she is a great friend and I hope that her quick wit, her bitch-side, her no-nonsense approach to life and her ability to listen to me through my fog remain in my life for as long as life remains in me.

Otis Funkmeyer and Lulutronic

A man walks into a Monkey Forest with an old friend. They do what any insane patrons of Monkey Forests would do – they start behaving like monkeys. As I was filming Lulu dance like a monkey complete with bulging face and wide monkey ears, a man tried to walk passed us. Lulu would have none of this, and so began literally ‘climbing’ him and picking the nits out of his hair.

That would be the beginning of the story of Otis Funkmeyer and Lulutronic.

Words are, again, inadequate to explain this part of the journey. To get a feel for Otis click here or google Meet The Funkmeyers. He is off the chart.

Our journey together was to have a look at the masculine principle. To look at how it feels demonised inside ourselves. Looking at how destruction gets a bad wrap! At the beauty inherent in anger when it is allowed to be there and not pushed away and ignored.

With Otis I would look at how we are truly beasts with consciousness. And I learned by him pushing me too far that anger is my device for drawing clear lines with the people around me. The further I let something go beyond that anger point the more lost I and the other become.

On the consciousness side of our learning we listened to the recordings of channelled aliens and let our imaginations run wild with ideas that probably seem crazy. And we learned through experiment, experience, mistakes and the odd success.

It was the best of times, it was the end of time.

Props have got to go out to Lulu whose pressure points were pushed through these experiences and held her own solidly.

Astrology and Energy Work

It hasn’t all been lessons with people… hmmm… Maybe it has. But still, a few skills were learned on the way as well. While here in Bali I’ve had the good fortune to have met some wonderful teachers of valuable skills.

Gary Roba has been my energy work teacher.  Gary’s teaching has given me the space to experiment and find my own way. This has helped me to develop a way of ‘listening’ to what the body wants to tell me that is my own and that continues to grow.

I have learned these techniques (or technique-less techniques as it may be) in the form of workshops. In these workshops I have gotten to know some of my other fellow explorers – a couple that really standout have been my friends Mitch and Margie. These 2 New Yorkers from Generation W (my new name for the baby boomers) each have 35 years psychotherapeutic experience and a wealth of life knowledge that they have so generously shared with me beyond the courses. They have become dear friends.

I have also been blessed to have learned Astrology with some of the world’s most accomplished teachers right here in Bali. Melanie Rhinehart, Steven Forrest, Rick Levine and Jeff Jawer came through here to teach. They use Astrology not as a predictive mechanism as it has a sour reputation for, but as a way to look deeper into yourself, your patterns and the way you were made and groomed.

I have found it to be a great tool for self-exploration and for understanding other human beings… Not that human beings can be truly understood, but you get my meaning.

Downtown Melanie Brown, my old friend from the early days of travel who I met 6 years ago, joined for the first course and stayed for 4 months. Together our friendship picked up where it left off, this time with astrology to help spin us out and put us back together again.

Denton, Megan and Henry

Denton and Megan are a couple of groovy Canadians with a 5 year old son – Henry. The adventure that these guys have taken me on has been something else entirely. To sum it up in a stupidly quick way…

Hang out with this couple, have an intense connection with little Henry, couple breaks up, hard times for all, have some strange dream relating to it all months before the event. It begins to mirror my own story and take me through my own path as seen through Henry’s eyes. Watching Henry handle it all has been inspiring and a way for me to rewrite my own life in some ways.

I’ve been staying with Denton out here in his mansion on the outskirts of Ubud for the last week to complete my journey. Last night I said to Henry, ‘Sleep well buddy.’ He replied, ‘How can I do that? I will just sleep how I sleep, I don’t have any control over it.’

That lets you know a little bit about Henry.

He also asked me once, 'Chris, when are you going to die?' Not a bad question for a Wednesday afternoon, eating pizza, taking a dip in the pool...

It's exciting to see what comes next with this family and their path. I'm sure that whatever it is, one unanswerable question will remain... 'Who's Driving?!'

Cat Kabira the Second

So where I’d left you with Cat was us sitting on a ledge in Amed tripping about Newness. After a while Cat and I started spending a lot of time together. It was the old story about Just Good Friends, but there was always something else on the border, discussing things with immigration, getting its bags checked, waiting to come in.

Abstinence makes the groin grow tender. Once the reluctance began to become a turn on we knew we were in trouble. And so the sexual energy that was brewing between us was eventually acted upon.

...

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, and force the issue with God, you'll get what you need. What Cat and I needed was a wakeup call to reallign what we 'want' with what we Actually Want.

A riddle for sure.

It never felt right for Cat and I to add sex to our friendship. Doing so nearly cost us our connection. When she left for the States after a particularly nasty break up breakdown there was a lot of smoke in the room. But over time it cleared and when she returned a few months later we were able to connect with greater depth and friendliness.

Now she's off becoming a yoga/shamanic/human rockstar and Aces and Oxen wishes her every success. She is a true friend and I know, in some way, she'll always be in my life.

A Slice of Irrelevance

I realised that I was at the risk of my blog becoming somehow meaningful. So to counter this I have had to introduce something slightly obscure. And, let's face it, there's nothing quite as irrelevant as an elephant (that one's for you T-Bop)

Imagine what life must be like in the womb of an elephant...