the sell

I've become completely weary of power and influence. The effort and energy that goes into selling and influencing around the world is staggering. It all seems so pointless. The amount of complete bullshit that people spew in high-level meetings is incredible. Who are these people? Do they actually believe the irrelevant conclusions that they are expending so much energy skirting around, all in the name of diplomacy? It's not even the people who are in a position of status or power, it's the people who court them and buy into it all who are worse than the feeling of eating ice-cream+poutine on a boat . . . in stormy weather . . . when prone to sea-sickness . . . or something even worse than that.

The thought of having to be in this environment on a daily basis completely terrifies me. It would be a fate worse than daily listening to fingernails scratching down a blackboard. The courting is at its absolute worst when former colonial elites veil their wagging fingers in so-called cultural exchange missions to developing countries. It's not even the obscene amount of money that is spent on these missions that is nauseating, it's the pomp and contempt and, worst of all, the attempt to disguise it as a friendly exchange. It's f-ing unsolicited advice, wrapped in posh accents and stiff upper lips. It's so completely tiring.

B-desh

super-decorated rickshaws

lots of pink

water everywhere

unicef-sponsored project that teaches children 5+ how to swim. the number one cause of death in children: drowning

cutest kid eyes ever

Surprise on the computer: Google in Bangla = ওয়েব

At some time non-specific in the last 48 hours, I was sitting at the airport watching people: one of my favourite activities. There was something really nice about seeing so many people express their faith through their dress. In Doha, the smorgasbord of traditional cultural and faith-based dress ranged from saris, hijabs, long white tunics worn with a taqiyah (a small pill-box-like hat worn by Muslim men), to flowing Bedouin gowns with keffiyehs wrapped like turbans. The airport lounge was full of people, expressing part of their inner state of being through meaningful sartorial splendor.

Every once in a while, a few people (often of European origin) in civilian clothing would dot this gathering of people with a special awkwardness. Maybe there was so much grace in the way people of faith moved that the pair of British (not that many Americans travel in the middle east?) tourists just seemed uneasy in contrast. The men in Bedouin gowns seemed to carry faith-laden and open hearts in their humble yet venerable chests, while the men in dri-fit hiking shirts seemed slouchy and often crossed their arms across their hearts. I'm sure I was just projecting my state of mind, but it almost seemed like they did not have enough faith inside them to keep their chests full.

It's important to believe, in whatever it is that one believes in and to be allowed to express it. It just seems such a shame to ban expression of faith because we have become so afraid of believing in false gods that we've stopped believing altogether.

I recently came across the term "imaginative overlay", which Yann Martel used as a substitute for the word "spiritual". He notes that the word spiritual connotes religion so much these days that most rational and scientific minds avoid it. So, in order to communicate to people thoughts on his secular beliefs, (untainted by dogma, history, and institution of religions) he now uses the term imaginative overlay. I.e. someone's imaginative overlay for life may involve believing in daily doses of pineapple and love + the existence of a collective unconscious . . .

In a way I'm saddened by this. As a friend pointed out recently, imaginative overlay sounds rather sterile. I like the word spiritual. I feel that I have been so obsessed by words and their exact meaning and semantics that I've missed the point somehow. I really feel that my life has been spiritually vacuous over the past few years . . . reading too many non-fiction books, searching for definitions and meaning through the intellect, overvaluing knowledge, and looking for linear processes.

Enter Herman Hesse.

I read Demian and Siddhartha by Hesse years ago. Both books really just confused me. They were given to me as presents by two different people. One a stranger, the other a close friend at the time. Until I re-read them, I hardly remembered the content, and the point of the books seemed like a blurry fog to me. It was strange because the narrative and stories seemed so simple. I just didn't get it.

When I began to acknowledge the spiritual vacuum in me, I picked up Siddhartha haphazardly, mostly because of its title (I remember that little from the first reading). It was probably one of the only books I had on my bookshelf that had anything remotely to do with spirituality.

Siddhartha, when I read it again a month ago, transformed me. I cried because the story resonated with me so deeply. It was so simple as a narrative and as a story; yet, it was incredibly deep and rich beneath the surface. The underlying spirituality of the simple story was like a whole different world, or seeing the world through completely different eyes. It felt profound and amazing in a very personal way.

I don't know how Hesse does it, but he manages to convey something as non-intellectual as spirituality in a way that just makes sense. I feel like he wrote about me and my life, my questions, my journey. I also feel like I'm committing a crime against Hesse's talent with these completely insufficient and inadequate descriptions of his work. I'm just so excited to have scratched the surface of my very own personal spirituality. It's really nice to have an imaginative overlay for the world, or my world at least. There really is just so much more than what's on the surface . . . much juicier this way.

bear necessity

sailing on the 10 metre bn

Before our sailing trip the other day, Lalsky and I had a Walter Cronkite news flash . . . that all boats and ships are female. Even if a boat has a masculine name (which is probably rare?), it will always be referred to as "she" or "her". In many places, real or imagined, waterways are symbolic of the course of life, and boats are vessels that carry life. Even the shape of boats are kind of vaginal (see photo as case in point).

This was the first outing for Wilma, the sailboat, this year. So, we freed her from the overgrown weeds and scrubbed her clean, readying her for the first sail. The cleaning and scrubbing was satisfying in the way of labour as opposed to work (labour stemming from a sense of care and love, while work stemming more from a sense of duty and maybe obligation). She needed care; she was a vessel of life, after all.

The sailing itself was more technical than I expected, with James, our teacher, patiently enabling us. Lalsky was steering while I was working part of a sail, whose technical name will forever be lodged in my mind as spanakopita. The sail was green and its name meant nothing to me, so I formed a mnemonic link to the Greek pastry with green filling. James was of course the glue that held the entire enterprise together (i.e. prevent capsizing/drowning).

Next time we're going to learn a song that we can sing while scrubbing Wilma.