Arrived in India, Part 2

We've now arrived at our final destination. Five weeks to go, only one before my special lady friend joins me. I have one more week at the Subbody Butoh School and then Sara and I are taking on a 200-hour yoga teacher training. I feel so excited about it all!

My daily life is pretty simple. I get woken up by barking dogs and non-melodic birds (I have yet to find an India ornithologist who can tell me the name of this most annoying bird I hear all the time.) Getting out of bed, I step on the cold ceramic floor while making a conscious effort to remember: must not brush teeth with tap water. I then take a spoonful of this Ashwagandha paste I have discovered - more on this later - and prepare some green tea. Curtains open, I greet the Dhauladar every morning with a short series of Sun Salutations. Taking the time to loosen up and breathe in deeply, this morning ritual has been a real delight. 

Introducing the Dhauladar Mountain Range and one of its many pretty late afternoon dresses.

I evolve in a perimeter of about 40 square meters: apartment, this café where I am right now, and the Butoh school. I do not wander off too much without planning a bit, because it's impossible to get anywhere without calling it a trek. Hence this café, called Illiterati because the concept is that its walls are filled with books (yeah!), has pretty much become my general quarters. I come here every day for a good wifi connection and a cup of tea or a meal.

The only thing that never changes is change itself.

I have plenty of time before school starts, so most of the time I actually go there around 9am to breathe and stretch some more, and meditate a bit. Then it's morning session. This butoh training method, Subbody, is all about calming the mind in order to connect with the subconscious realm in which our body is our mind is our body. Mornings are dedicated to what they call ''conditioning''; it can be massage, spinal consciousness, walking meditation, or anything that will gently connect us with body-consciousness. Needless to say: I love it.

View from the upper studio.

Weeks go by very quickly. We mix self-exploration with group resonance session. I feel that my butoh is slowly expanding; or perhaps is just my mind quieting a bit more. No concepts, no politics, no pressure on myself, I am actually managing to mostly just remain curious.

The butoh we explore in this school is very much inspired by the work of Tatsumi Hijikata. It is hard but I keep what Rhizome Lee (our teacher) had written as the main guiding principle: butoh expands the notion of what a being human is/means. This quote, which comes from Hijikata himself, means that the work of butoh is to think outside the common notion of humanity to incorporate all the realms that make us: single-cell organisms, ancestors, natural elements, surrealist dreams, etc. This is what we dance, or rather, this is what we open ourselves up to be danced by.

I feel that I am starting to understand what butoh is. 

This being said, I know there is still - and probably will always remain - something alluding me... like... I'm not a fully-enlightened-by-cosmic-grace-dancer yet. ;)

On the weekends, I get out of my living perimeter and hike up to McLeod Ganj. The area, known as Little Lhasa, is home to a large population of Tibetans who have migrated to escape from Chinese oppression and to settle around the temple in exile of their political and spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

The streets there offer numerous shops with crafts, jewellery, singing bowls, restaurants, and so on. It's been filling up with an increasing number of tourists in recent years. You won't be surprised if I tell you I've been having mixed feeling about this. But then I'm on a journey to being softer with myself, so instead of feeding the politically critical chatter, I've actually surrendered to my love for beautiful shiny things!  

I've been trying to find out about the name of the artist(s)
behind these gorgeous murals.

In truth, I've noticed that I feel soooo good after spending a bit of time inside a small shop filled with gemstones and statues of Shiva. So, I've actually been thinking about starting a little import business myself! If beauty soothes me this much, it can certainly benefit others too. I've met this man who offered to take me to the people who make what he sells. Unfortunately, I won't have time to accept his invitation this time around. But if this idea keeps sprouting, I'll make sure to go to come back and go to Kashmir to meet these artisans. I could then feel honoured to be part of the chain that helps them make a living by distributing their creations.

Beauty surrounds indeed, but as you might know, India is a land of contrasts. So I'll finish this post with a few thousand words wrapped in a series of pictures. These photos cannot portray the level of uneasiness, not to say anger, or despair, that lurks to get to me at every turn. I could take hundreds of pictures like these. 

It was really hard to cope during my first week or two here. Now I guess I've adapted a bit to give my nervous system a break. Life adapts.

Waste disposal.

These streets are made out of...
motorcycles and trash...basically.

Anyone would like a murder for dinner?

Water : not to be taken for granted

But I shan't leave you with these sad images. I will bridge it all with a last shot which I took because I perceive a lot of beauty in decay. There is so much of it here... so much of Life.

''Things they come, and things they go. And that's one thing you oughta know.''

Third trimester: Arrived in India (Part 1)

Lord Ganesha at the Gate

I've been in India for about three weeks now. It took time to adjust. Now I'm going to try and write... Let's see what happens!

I don't know exactly why this one is in English, but I don't need to know. This much I'm figuring out. This is actually what this trip has taught me. I realize it's what I've wanted to learn. Not knowing is okay.

Case in point.  Last night I went to my first ''Butoh jam'' at the Subbody School - there where I've been taking daily classes for the past 3 weeks. I didn't know what a Butoh jam was, but I assumed it was similar to what we do everyday: dancing the question mark. 
Got there first.  Hmm.  Laid down on the wooden floor, since I've come to discover that this - a wooden floor - might be my favorite place to be. There, I observed my breath, my limbs resting on the ground, my desire to move. And as I've been doing daily for the past 3 weeks, I listened to the fine line between will and impulse. What are my patterns of movement? How can I open up a new relationship with my body? Moving not from the limbs but from the spine, sacrum or cervical bone, like an ocean wave or a breath, listening to the necessary transformation created by any movement or impulse, I slowly began to dance...

More people started to show up and sat around the studio. New faces - expats or tourists from up the hill I suppose. I had made my way from the periphery to the center of the room, gently stretching and moving to the watery qualia - defined by my teacher, Rhizome Lee, as ''anything Life feels'' - I got from the music. After a while, a classmate actually invited everyone to dance, because there were only few of us on the floor. Some guy said, ''It's just not really what I expected from the invitation I got.'' I was next to him so I answered: 
''It's my first time too. I don't actually know what I'm doing.'' 
''But you look like you're a professional'', he said. 
Ego flattered, I confess, though most naturally I answered:
''A professional not-knower of what I'm doing, maybe!'' And that was it. I had put words to what's been going on.

Tibetan prayer flags in Upper Bhagsu. Helps us see the wind.

Because everyday my monkey-mind leads me to the future with its clichés: What will you do after this is all over? How will you make a living? How can you continue healing yourself and shaping a life with enough freedom to attend to your life force? How will it all be received back home? Where is home? And on and on...

These thoughts are natural and are probably never going to stop popping up. Of course life needs a bit of planning and intention. But this need for security cannot become so constricting that I need to ingest anxiety meds everyday. The future is undetermined. That's the beauty of it. 

Friendly reminder

Coming to India has put me through an interesting emotional curve.

 As one would expect, the arrival in Delhi - in the middle of the night - was unsettling. But I had preemptively organized everything: I had a private taxi-driver pick me up at the airport. He would prove his identity with a special password, and bring me straight to my hostel. Well, I shouldn't say ''straight'', because nobody drives straight in India!

Arrived in Paharganj neighborhood, I found out my hostel hid in some smelly alley off the main bazar. Lots of stray dogs. My first sacred cow. Everything was dusty, smelly, trashy.

Main bazar, Paharganj, Delhi

Next morning, jet-lagged, I went out for a stroll in the bazar to start soaking in the ambiance. Too much for the eyes and brain to take in. A lot for the ears. Watch out where you step. No, I don't want to buy this, thank you. The men husteling and bustling; women keeping to themselves. I found that I could only go out for short amounts of time before returning for short breaks in my room to rest.

3 days to spend in Delhi. I rode in tuk-tuks, took the metro, visited the Lotus Temple, and bought a few small things. I got totally ripped off by a nicely-knit, multiple-person scheme that took me from the bazar to some fake (?) governmental tourist office to a shop where they charged me triple the price of a salwar kameez - indian long shirt with pants and scarf. Oh well! A relatively painless initiatory experience after all.

I then took the train heading to Pathankot, which is about 2-3 hours from Dharamsala. Nervous about morning traffic and finding my way around Old Delhi's Station, I arrived there 2 hours early. Had some chaï, sat outside with my book in front of the departure board. 20 minutes before my departure time, I went inside the station and stood in front of the board there. But something was strange : my train was not showing. When I asked a girl about it she said I could go ask for information outside. Adrenalin suddenly rising up, I grabbed by backpack and went back outside. A swarm of men were trying to talk to the inquiry person. Then luckily I noticed a white board with hand-writing on it : train numbers... platform... my train! Platform 20! Run!

Just like in the movies I ran and up the stairs I saw my train starting to move forward. 
Run! Run! Grabbed the handle of the last wagon and climbed on it in extremis. Thank Shiva!  Though it wasn't the wagon I had reserved online, at least I had made it.

I gathered myself and looked around: people were sitting on the floor, a sikh man with a boy, a shoeless hindu monk, some kids with their mom in the corner. I felt I was taking up a lot of space with my big bags and my white skin. When I walked to the door to go through to the next wagon, I found it only led to the ... how do you call those sqatty latrine-type holes in the floor? Stopped breathing for a split-second before I chose to accept and enjoy. So I put my rucksack down and sat on it, my back against the thin wall of that shitty stall, and did like those men were doing: enjoy the wind on my face as I stared out at the landscape passing before our eyes through the open door. 

We arrived in Pathankot an hour and 30 minutes late. I was starting to feel queezy inside and hoped there would be cabs available to drive me to Dharamsala after dark.

I might have paid more than needed, but my driver, Munna, turned out to be very sweet. My stomach, on the other hand, was not giving such a pleasing sensation. I was getting increasingly uncomfortable and I was very tired. We were but a few curvy kilometers away when I urgently asked Munna to pull over : hello food poisoning. I shall spare you the details of what happened next. Let's just say that for the next few days, I always knew where I could find the bathroom.

I thereby had my first experience of turista, or as it is called in these parts of the world: delhi belly. With unpredictable bowels for only company, abandoned by my usually faithful appetite, I found my arrival in this new environment difficult. I thank my girlfriend who helped me through it diligently and patiently, connecting to video chat with me several times a day. Even though I knew it would pass, I needed someone I could cry in front of.

And the people I spoke to were nice too. They had empathy and advice for me: eat some papaya seeds, bananas, rice... and if I was still sick after 6-7 days, I should probably go get tested to put a name on this intestinal invader and get the right antibiotic. So I did that... and abracadabra! 
What I've learned in this : my friends, if it ever happens to you, getting tested is so worth it! 

This again is becoming a looooong blog post.  So why don't I leave it at this and let you go to the next post for another piece of adventure? 

For Part2, click here!

Tous ces fleuves

Je dois accepter qu'il m'est impossible d'exprimer toutes les impressions.
J'accepte que cette fois-ci, c'est dans le silence que s'opèrent les transformations.
J'observe encore de mon oeil politique les grandes églises édifiées en d'autres temps, les graffitis comme des balafres criant: ''il y a toujours de la vie ici!''. Ces villes historiques. Étroits passages, murs élevés, aux abords de tant de fleuves nourriciers. 
Prise entre les temps et l'apprentissage du moment. J'accepte.

Je me suis baignée nue dans une source thermique naturelle adjacente au Rio Grande.

 Au Nouveau-Mexique, au Texas et en Oklahoma, on prône la déregulation complète du port d'arme. Les panneaux le long de l'autoroute culpabilisent les femmes qui songeraient à recourir à l'avortement. Le conservatisme américain... in our face.

Notre sympathique covoitureur, Michael le gypsy sailor, nous raconte qu'il vit sur son voilier, dans une marina située à Oakland (Caflifornie). Il vit libre, sans carte de crédit, et gagne sa vie en tant que mécanicien et livreur de bateaux. Il ne porte plus de chaussures depuis près de dix ans, sauf lorsque cela est requis. Nous le déposons chez sa soeur, dans l'Oklahoma, et passons la nuit dans la chambre d'amis.

La route 66 est ponctuée de station-essence-boutiques, qui vendent toutes les mêmes souvenirs pacotilles. Qu'est-ce que le roadtrip aujourd'hui sinon la tentation répétée du consumérisme? La lutte contre le cynisme est énergivore et il s'avère pratiquement impossible de manger de la vraie nourriture pour retrouver des forces.

Les Grands-Lacs sont là. Chicago, Détroit, Hamilton, Toronto. Nous sommes passées trop vite, bien entendu, pour daigner affirmer qu'on pourrait connaître l'âme et le pouls véritable de chacune de ces villes. 

Plaques tournantes industrielles et culturelles, autrefois ou encore ou en rémission. Des coeurs battants : systole, diastole, systole... Et aux Grands-Lacs se rattache cette artère fluviale que les québécois.es connaissent bien: le fleuve Saint-Laurent.  
J'aurais aimé demeurer plus longtemps et mieux faire l'expérience de ce Détroit en rémission; parcourir ses jardins urbains, ses restaurants végétaliens, et ses manifestations d'art populaire et communautaire. 

Ce sera pour un autre périple!

De l'autre côté de l'Atlantique nous découvrons Galway. Son fleuve, le Corrib, ne fait que 6 kilomètres mais il est l'un des plus puissants d'Europe. En Irlande, l'humidité de décembre creuse ses dents jusqu'à la moelle de mes os. Je lutte pour m'adapter au climat et au décalage horaire; je découvre les vertus du ginseng.  J'essaie de lire James Joyce dans sa langue natale; mais je n'ai plus l'habitude de lire des romans, et les subtilités de ce vieil anglais irlandais m'échappe. No crac.

Un soir, nos oreilles nous attirent dans ce bar quelconque du quartier Shantalla où a lieu un rassemblement de musiciens locaux. Ils sont une dizaine: quatre violons, deux accordéons, deux guitares, une flûte... que du plaisir!

En Bretagne, ce sont les eaux de la Manche, déchaînées, qui nous remuent.  On se retrouve en famille pour traverser les sombres journées du plus creux d'un autre hiver. On mange et on boit ensemble, suivant la tradition. On se conforte, on se confronte. L'air salin nous appelle vers l'heure où le soleil se couche: c'est la saison des grandes marées. Sous la lune montante, les familles bretonnes s'attroupent aux abords de la puissante mer. Nous sommes si petits. Les vagues, quoique parfois plus impetueuses que d'autres, sont éternelles. 

Puis je m'envole pour Pise pour y prendre le train en direction de Pontedera. Là-bas, c'est le ''fleuve Butoh'' qui m'accueille. C'est un affluent métaphorique, certes, mais c'est un véritable courant!

  

Ah! Mon amour de butoh! Tellement indicible... et c'est justement en ça qu'habite tout le sens de notre relation. Je cherche, dans ma pratique butoh, à m'immerger entière dans la ''réalité totale''.  Cette réalité comprend toutes les dimensions de l'existence, du big bang aux appels de mon imagination en passant par tout ce qui nourrit l'inconscient collectif. 

Cette réalité, je l'invite et l'explore grâce à mon corps, mon énergie vitale, et ma concentration.  Je sonde et m'émerveille de tout ce qui palpite et respire sous ma peau, de tout ce que mon esprit peut projeter de poésie dans l'espace qui m'entoure.  Ce fleuve est immense et lorsque je m'y baigne j'ai le sentiment de danser avec ce qu'il y a de plus vrai au monde: la conscience du Tout. Cela m'émeut, cela m'inspire. 

Aisément, les rives de l'Arno m'ont permis d'opérer la transition hors de ma butoh-bulle. Florence, berceau de la Renaissance, a en effet de quoi ravir et faire renaître les sens!  

D'abord il y a la nourriture: fière et fraîche. (En y songeant, ce n'est pas un hasard si le mouvement ''Slow Food'' a vu jour en Italie.) Il y a aussi l'omniprésence de la mode, des souliers et des sacs de cuirs. Les florentin.es aparaissent toujours si bien sapés qu'on n'en vient presque à avoir honte de ne pas arborer au moins mille Euros de fringues. Non je blague, je n'avais pas honte. Je mentirais à vous dire que mes yeux n'apprécient pas le défilé.

Naturellement, mon esprit s'affaire à chercher une clé dans le phénomène, dans l'histoire. Car ce qui a vu le jour avec la Renaissance semble aujourd'hui approcher une crise irrémédiable.  Je pense à l'avénement des professions libérales, du capitalisme, des corporations. Je pense aux banquiers, aux médecins, aux avocats et aux chefs de multinationales. Ceux qui ont jadis remplacés les seigneurs et le clergé sont aujourd'hui au pouvoir! Et comme jadis, ils en abusent trop souvent.

Ainsi, autant le flot historique qu'on nomme le Moyen-Âge s'est-il transmuté, comme en une chûte, pour faire place à des âges radialement différents, autant il me semblerait possible de voir l'ère actuelle faire place à d'autres moeurs, à d'autres valeurs, et à d'autres manières de concevoir le monde et notre place en celui-ci. 

L'histoire parfois me donne espoir.

Or, puisque le débit de mon compte en banque s'écoule à sens unique depuis plusieurs mois, et puisque que le prix d'un logis s'avère très cher lorsque réglé à la nuité, nous avons choisi d'éviter la région Toulousaine (ah! La belle Garonne!) et d'en profiter pour vivre une nouvelle expérience linguistique et culturelle: Porto.

Nous voici donc près du Douro, à galvauder un portugais mi-espagnol et mi-brésilien et à s'emplir les pupilles de mille et une vista architecturales : des tuiles de céramiques sur tous les murs! Des murs... qui ne sont pas toujours en très bonne condition. Des édifices à l'abandons, d'autres en pleine rénovations. 

Il serait certainement naïf de m'essayer à un portrait de la situation économique de l'endroit. On sait très bien qu'il se passe quelque chose au Portugal. Destination de voyage # 1 l'année dernière; le phénomène est indéniable. Je veux bien reconnaître que j'y prends actuellement part. 
Mais est-ce que le tourisme peut être une bonne chose?

Partout, cette année, on nous a raconté qu'un nombre grandissant de propriétaires préfèrent louer leurs appartements en AirBnB plutôt qu'à des tenanciers locaux. Les prix des loyers grimpent. Les esprits entrepreneurs visent les clientèles friquées qui ne sont que de passage. À quel point cela peut-il être bon pour les économies locales? J'aimerais lire sur le sujet, engager la conversation.

J'aimerais bâtir des ponts. 

''Les hommes construisent trop de murs et pas assez de ponts.''

- Isaac Newton