meaning in the moving design

you said hello, i said i'm sorry
our first meeting.
I didn't know him. Or you.
but i held your hand at the buriel nonetheless.
family, in its absence.
makeshift and hesitant.
connection forged of necessity.
12,000 miles from home.

Later my husband would ask about you, how it went.
did i remember to explain his absence by way of inauspicious warnings and unlucky numbers and prayers
the absent mourner and I, the ambassador

im holding your hand again
your eyes are heavy with death
the machines beep and click
punctuates the silence that cloaks us in a heavy embrace
i imagine that you can feel my hands closed over yours
i imagine sneaking beneath your eyelids for candid conversations
i imagine the flow of history and love and blood between us
though we are not bound by blood, not in the strictest sense.

We weaved those blood lines years ago
in the days and moments and pauses that followed
sitting across the table, flipping tiles and clucking tongues,
throwing back tea like it was bourbon
gambling in the dignified way that Chinese people do
You had seen the world and been back again
middle aged, widowed and wearing it well
san francisco. new york. paris.
you understood this thing called the west
you wore it in your voice
booming fierce and full
oblivious to the mild looks of embarrassment from your muted company.
You were always apart.
Bigger and louder
boasting a kind of freedom we all feared but secretly envied.

Once, at a party
I caught you sitting alone, eyes closed with your head tilted towards the sun
"C'mon, let's play" you said, grabbing my hand to sit down. "Close your eyes, look up at the sun and think red. Till the spots go away. Think it as red as possible.
i closed my eyes self consciously and after a few prompts, kept them shut. Through my eyelids I saw red with speckles of black, strobes of white.
"C'mon," you said. "Think red"
The speckles and stripes cleared and the red beneath my eyelids grew deeper and darker
filled like wells and burned.

cancer is a funny thing
a disease composed of question marks
a no-fucking-clue-why malfunctioning body
a no-fucking-clue-how malfunctioning body
suddenly things are wrong and get more wrong
and can't seem to remember how to be right again

I had a dream about this moment years ago.
I dreamed we were both children, down by the river.
I was following you, I crept behind you and stationed myself downstream as you knelt by the river in tears.
"I'm sick," you screamed into the river.
"I'm sick," the river whispered to me.
"I'm sick, I'm sick, I'm sick"

It claimed him 20 years ago and now it's come back for you.
A hungry ghost.
I squeeze your hand again.
"i'll be back tomorrow," I say.
And I am. But you're not in bed.
The nurse puts a hand on my shoulder and whispers
I'm sorry.
She is prepared for a reaction but i swallow back the weight in my heart
Thank her and turn away.
on the way home I stop in a parking lot and empty myself
before turning the key,kissing my husband on the cheek and starting dinner.

Lately, I've been eavesdropping on a lot of people talking about greatness. Toronto is a magnet for ambition, and for people who thirst and strive for greatness. I started asking myself if that was something I strove for and the answer came back a very resolute NO. I don't want to be great. I just want to be whole.

It's the difference between growing in a line and growing in layers; filling up and filling out. I don't care for the greatness of stuff, the greatness of ego and self-importance- really, I'd like to trash that whole show. I hate capitalism in part because it engenders this very idea of greatness. I never want my sense of self to be tied to my job title. My thirst is for something different. I want to feel... full. My life choices are all about making me feel this intangible fullness, wholeness, satiated with ideas and knowledge and never-befores...

I keep waiting for reality to kick in, to realize I'm old and need to be making more soberingly responsible decisions... but it hasn't happened yet. I think I'm going to ride this out as long as I can. I hope the world can live with that.

I am a shit talker. I love telling stories- about myself and about the world- and when I'm talking about anything, in any context, about anyone, you can be sure that it's really just all about me.

Consequently, when I interact with others, I can't help but assume that they too are wrapped in self-reflexive sticky tape, and that the whisper of insight I glean from our interaction is a small fraction of the scream they intend to communicate. This is pretty much my working assumption with all attempts at communication- I don't know you; I can't know you; I can only know the you in me and that you is a story I've crafted through careful detective work laden with my own subjective bullshit.

So I find it pretty amusing that I've somehow found myself dating someone with an unshakeable faith in words; who firmly believes in the importance of classification; who has an aversion to narrative; who is happy to see a spade as a spade, whosoever should call it so. All this talk about talk brought me back to certain ideas that I used to circle around a lot, and back to Hannah Arendt. Last year, while writing an article for work about Women and Philosophy, I discovered Arendt's The Human Condition, and found all my thesis ideas articulated by A Famous Person, which made me feel both cheap and unoriginal, and immensely privileged to be philosophically aligned with A Famous Person.

Hannah (The Famous Person with which I am aligned and thus can casually refer to on a first name basis) and I both agree that understanding people through their words is about as exact a science as meteorology- you can amass as much evidence as you want to support your assertion that x is x, and you can devise your plan of action accordingly, but it simply may not be so. We all know this (duh, people are complex) but we sometimes don't recognize how much of our actions and interactions are based on these quick fix placeholders. We are in love with our nouns; intangibles don't sit well with us. So, to get through life without having our heads explode in the ideological netherworld, we say "ok. I know x is not exactly x, but let's assume it is... for the moment" and then we plan our counter-actions accordingly. But the assumptions build on more assumptions, and the placeholders of ourselves become the charicature stand-ins in our shared reality with others.

In Hannah's words, there is a distinction between "who" we are and "what" we are; and words can lead us only to the what: "The moment we want to say who someone is, our very vocabulary leads us astray into saying what she is; we get entagled in a description of qualities she necessarily shares with others like her; we begin to describe a type or a character... with the result that her specific uniqueness escapes us" (The Human Condition, 181).

This is why I put all my words in brackets, and why I like fridge poetry, anecdotes, rants without context, exquisite corpsey writing and non-sensical non-sequiters. Language to me is about codification, so I figure, if I can confuse the law that language governs; if I can use words in ways they aren't meant to be used, then maybe I can reveal more of myself. If I don't name my truth, it forces you to fill in the blanks with your youness, and maybe that will lead you to it via the scenic route. That mystery and revelation, that intangible moment in between, is honestly what most humbles me about being with and among other people.

Ok, let's leave that for now. Let's just frame this conversation in simpler terms- objectivity and subjectivity. Hannah talks about our subjective selves, and about a) how we relate to the common things and stuff of our shared world and b) how we relate to each other. She calls these relations "in-betweens" and says this:


To better explain this to myself, I drew a diagram (the conical shaped things on the sides [that look like tadpoles] are actually supposed to be eyes).


Figure A. illustrates how we relate to "worldly objective reality", you know, my red isn't the same as your red etc. Figure B. illustrates how that simple subjective premise is amplified when you're dealing with and reflecting back a whole other set of subjective filters. The effect is akin to holding a mirror up to another mirror- it's an endless strange loop of interpreted and reinterpreted subjective baggage and poof! brainfuck!

How do we resolve this? How the hell, then, can people understand and relate to one another? I feel like the answer is two-fold: look in and act out. One of the most profound analogies I've ever heard came from a live Saul Williams event at Glendon campus a few years back. He was talking about connecting to people, and he said there are 2 ways of going about this. He said


This, to me, is the starting point. With every social interaction, we should come into the conversation knowing that we're really (in a cynical sort of way) just talking to our own reflection.* That this "ask and answer" just happens to necessitate another body to help you in understanding yourself better. This may sound unconscionably self-serving but I actually think it can be very symbiotic- we are helping each other recognize ourselves more fully; to dig deeper inside to find the source material from which we are all made; to touch the intangible in-between Hannah refers to.

We are all made of the same "stuff", but how we articulate that- the patterns we weave with that universal source material, this unique and unrepeated design called the Self- is infinitely complex. So here comes the second part- I've always thought that the greatest gift you can give the world is to keep articulating who you are and why you are to everyone you encounter. In turn, I also think the most beautiful and humbling part of talking to people is trying to understand who they are and why they are, and this process- of recognizing how we have drawn from the universal "stuff", how we've taken from it or how it has taken from us to weave a unique life experience- this is how we connect.

Hannah and I both agree that the most beautiful thing about humanity is its ability to collectively reflect on both the sum and its parts. Hannah calls it "the paradoxical plurality of unique beings," and that is exactly how I understand the idea of community. Only by screaming out your own subjectivity can you arrive at an honest point of connection*, and it's this gift of difference that we can all collectively draw from, revel in. "Speech and action reveal this unique distinction. Through them, men distinguish themselves... they are the modes in which human beings appear to each other... This appearance rests on initiative, but it is an initiative from which no human being can refrain and still be human" (The Human Condition, 176).

Ok, this is long and rambly and I've only told you half of Hannah's story (or my story about Hannah and all this other stuff I thunked up) Hannah actually talks a lot about actions... and I've managed to say an awful lot about saying things and nothing about doing stuff.

So I'll end with a reflective observation about me and action. Hannah uses this term called praxis, simply put praxis is the process of gathering your reflections and ideas, and giving them life- putting your ideas into action.

Here's what I'll say about praxis. I use Firefox's "save and quit" function to keep all my existing tabs open, so that the next time I turn on my laptop, I have several tabs staring back at me, reminding me of what my focus/interest/obsession was from the day before. Some of these tabs have been hanging about on my computer for some 10 months- no joke. Here are my tabs:

1. reroot organic CSA, internship information
2. "Make Radio", This American Life
3. Transom.org- Ira Glass interview on making radio docs
4. My own tarsier photo on flickr (to remind myself I want to print it out)
and, newly added
5. Wikipedia definition- praxis

Ahem. I done praxis dem sludam** wicked well. Big up Hannah to the massive...

* You don't have to agree with me. I don't even know if I agree with me... but here's another paraphrased quote to excuse everything I've said: "Things go through me. And if I am individual it is because these threads are knotted together in this particular time and this particular place, and they hold."

** sludam is plural for sluts. I learned that from a Teen Slang expert

It's the close of the G20. After a month of media distractions about security budgets and fake lakes and riot anticipation and thugs in black and burning cop cars and all the rest, are you perhaps needing to remind yourself of what the hell it is that the G20/G8 does and why it's important and why all these people are out on the streets anyway?? If you don't know the answer to any of these it's because mainstream media has failed us. It's because Harper's gamble- that holding the G20 in the heart of the city would cause enough of a media circus to distract us from the real issues- is paying off. Don't take the bait.

http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/story/why-are-they-protesting/3843

I am so disgusted with the CBC's coverage of all of this- so many collected quotes about the "thugs" and "hooligans," none about the illegal house raids, the random arrests and deplorable detention centre conditions. Of all the online mainstream media, national post has been the only one even remotely on point is the national post (?!?!). And I think it's because they're really pissed that their staff got arrested.

A humble thanks to all the folks at the Toronto Media Co-op for their sacrifice to give us the other side of the story.

T-minus 7 days to G20... get your dose of happy now! [maybe we should make this mandatory training for G20 security guards??]

June 16th – 20th - Rainbow City Installation at Queen’s Park
PRESS: Rainbow City welcomes all into a world of Magic, Luck, and Friendship! As the highlight of the 10-day festival, FriendsWithYou transform Toronto’s Queen’s Park into Rainbow City from June 16th-20th with their largest and most impressive installation to date. The Rainbow King and a cast of celestial pals embark on a mission to delight citizens by welcoming them into Rainbow City, a magical kingdom where happiness is the key and the more you play the better you feel!


[2008 Fun House – Scope Art Fair, Art Basel Miami, FL]
Bounce, dance and chill as the Wish Come True characters bring you into their colorful alternative dimension of gigantic totems, mushrooms, and bounce houses while inflatable friends shower you with magic, color, and love! FriendsWithYou and Luminato are offering this unique experience with the hope of bringing people together to find a central happiness that is common inside of everyone.

I am keen to check this out. But I am equally keen to be there during take down... and watch Rainbow City slowly deflate as Tent City rises. Someone should do a time lapse of central happiness giving way to police blockades, tear gas and chaos...

Getting old is a sneaky thing. Everyone always complains about the rumble of the big 3.0 but I'd say that my 30th birthday was perfectly chill- no neurotic impulse to deconstruct my life, no aching sentimentalism about all the lost years of my youth, no reminders of how time has past and the awe or reverence that comes with that.

No... that's all hitting me now, at 3.14159... tricky dick, that 31-and-a-half. Lately I've been running into a lot of old peeps. Not just people I used to hang out with, but also (and even weirder), people that I just used to see around. Like, back was I went out more. It's a strange feeling to be outside of a community you once felt so entrenched in, one that feels like it still carries that version of you with it.

I recently ran into some musician friends from OM days. I'd met their daughter when she was barely able to walk (we had a nice bonding moment when I picked her up as she was crying and she clung to me and fell back asleep. [Especially impressive because it was the morning after a sleepless night during which I was probably up to no good]). Last week, I saw her for the first time since and it blew my mind. She's six now. Six. like a completely real, actualized person. WEEEEIIIRD.

To save me from all these head trips, I recently got obsessed with feather stars, or rather, I reawakened an old obsession. I caught sight of these wily ocean invertebrates in Borneo, I was snorkeling along and suddenly I saw this awesome wiggling, wiggly feather thing. Then, when I dove down to get a better look, it went perfectly still and pretended that it was a plant!

Check it (sorry for the shaky video):

I come from a typical middle class Chinese family. My mother was a nurse, my father was an accountant. Growing up, all that was ever expected of me was to do well in school, get a higher education and find a good, well-paying job. One of those jobs that everyone's heard of, like Teacher, or Doctor, or Lawyer, or (... shudder) Dentist.

So when I started working in the arts, my parents were not only disappointed, they were confused. "Do you make movies?" they asked. "Are you a Director?" No, I said, I present movies at film festivals. I help publicize them, and I organize classes and events that help filmmakers make better films. That kind of stumped them. There was no easy NOC occupation that went with that, no one-word answer that they could take back to their friends. In short, they would rather I be a Dentist*.

When I was in Taiwan, I made things a lot easier for my parents. "She's a Writer," they would brag to their friends, relieved to finally have a name for me. But now that I'm back in Toronto, and have made yet another lateral step across careers (this time into environmental non-profit), I've once again put my parents in the awkward position of trying to figure out exactly what it is that I do. But they're trying....

This is just one of many cute emails I get from my dad, and it kind of made my day:

(Click on this to read it)










(the other super cute thing about my dad and emails is that he always puts the salutatory exclamation point in the wrong spot, like "Hi! Anita,"
... which, when I say it out loud, makes me laugh. A lot.)

I personally LOVE not being a one-word answer. And that's probably precisely the point, I'm happy to do laps around any word, any label, any noun. Happy to indulge this childish instinct to dance around the oppressive thumb trying to pin me down...

I am a living document, dagnammit.

So as for what it is I do....

A lot. I do a lot. Come talk to me about it sometime.


*Who the fuck grows up wanting to be a dentist?? That, to me, just points to an utter lack of imagination...

I got my fridge poetry set back recently. I missed its randomness, the effortless you can patch together meaning using words in ways they're not meant to be used. I'm a pretty veiled person, and fridge poetry is like this gutteral incoherent mess that bubbles up from my subconscious. A beautiful mess.

Usually my fridge poetry makes sense. However abstract, I can usually see where I'm going with something; I know what I'm trying to say to myself.

... This one escapes even me.

(I love how I take fridge poetry so goddamn seriously. I've tried so hard to write something funny with these things and I've failed every time.)

disclaimer:
I usually try to clean up my writing before broadcasting... but this is about 6 months old and I'm kind of mad at my own lazy lack of productivity, so I'm just lettin' 'er go*.

Michael and Ba
We tramp down the hill in search of a coffee shop. A man comes out of a nearby house waving emphatically. "You turists?" he asks. We explain that we'd been hiking the East Coast Trail and that we were in town for the night. He slams the porch rail enthusiastically and invites us in. "Ba!" he calls into the house. "We got guests! They're turists!"

Inside the house, a toothless man sits at the table in a simple kitchen. A few slabs of unidentifiable grey meat are sizzling in a pan next to a pot of boiled potatoes, and a half-drained bottle of rum sits on the table. The waver's name is Michael. He greets us with a combination of cheek kisses, hand-holding and fist pumps. The toothless man is Michael's uncle, whom he calls "Ba" but isn't actually related to him at all. Michael keeps apologizing because Ba is drunk... even though Michael is clearly drunk too. He chastises Ba with stern little speeches. "You can't be drunk, Ba. We got turists here. You're lucky to have turists in yer home like this. No more drinkin', ok? Tomorrow we stop drinkin'"

"Weeengshmaaaa," gurgles Ba.

Ba has the unfortunate disposition of being entirely incomprehensible. Three main factors contribute to this:
1. He's drunk
2. He's toothless
3. He's a Newfie

Everyone loves making lists for the new year. That's what new years are all about: lists. Nobody actually cares if you quit smoking, you just have to put it on your list...

All this end-of-the-decade listmaking makes me want to make lists. I don't know how many hours I've spent watching movies this decade, probably something in the region of "a fuck of a lot," so I guess that's as good a place to start as any. So, in no particular order, here we go.

It started with a gulch.

We were on the East Coast Trail in Newfoundland, reading out directions from our trusty map: "Following the path, you will pass a small gulch, followed by two larger gulch-like gulches, which in turn precede a particularly steep gulch just left of the isthmus."

We... had no idea what a gulch was.

That got me thinking that all those other pretty things I was gushing over probably had names too, like not just "that rocky shelf thing with the cool guy around it..." So I've decided to dedicate an entire post to geography, or more specifically, geomorphology- that mysterious, creative force that shapes all that natural beauty around us. Time to get your learn on....

Let us begin.

A shoal is a bar of sand. A dune is a hill of sand. A dune field is a field of dunes. An erg is an extremely large dune field.

(Easy so far, eh? Take a deep breath...)

A valley is a dale. A gully is a small valley. A valley full of water is a vale. A wooded valley is a dell. A small valley surrounded by mountains is a hollow. A deep, narrow valley is a coombe or a glen. A deep valley carved by water is a gorge or a canyon. A wide and shallow valley carved by water is a strath. The opposite of a valley is a hill or knoll or mound.

A drumlin is a long whale-shaped hill formed by glacial activity. A crevasse is a fissure in a glacier. A moulin is a fissure (such as a crevasse) through which water enters into a glacier. A pingo is a mound of earth-covered ice. It is also a friend of Pingu the penguin.

A bay is a bay. A cove is a bay with a narrow mouth. A gulch is a rectangular-shaped cove with steep sides (at least in Newfoundland). A gulf is a large bay. So is a sound or a bight. A fjord is a narrow bay with steep sides, carved by glacial activity.

A river is a river. A stream is a small river. A bayou is a slow-moving river or stream, or a marshy lake. A bayou is also an anabrach, which means it will divert from the main waterway and rejoin it at a later point. An estuary is a brackish body of water that sits on the mouth of the ocean and also has freshwater (ie. rivers and streams) flowing into it. A delta is a landform composed of sediments that forms at the end of a river, before the river flows into a lake, an estuary, an ocean or another river.


A ventifact is a rock or stone that has been shaped or polished by wind. A yardang (which comes in mega-, mesa- and micro-) is a ridged ventifact shaped like the hull of a boat. An eolianite is any rock created by the wind through the compacting of sediments. A mesa is a mountain or hill with a large flat top and steep sides. A butte is like a mesa, but with a smaller flat top and really steep sides.

A stack is a tall column of rocks found near the coast. Stacks are remnants of headlands that were eroded away by the waves. A headland is also a cape. A hoodoo is also a column of rock, but is only found in the badlands. They're usually composed of sedimentary rock, but have a hard hat of volcanic rock that protects it from erosion. Badlands contain canyons, hoodoos and eroded sedimentary rock. Malpais (or "bad land") are like badlands but contain eroded volcanic rock. A scree or talus is a pile of rock fragments found at the base of a mountain or a cliff or a crag.

A ridge is an edge of a landmass. An arête is a super thin ridge of rock. A defile is a narrow pass between a hill or a mountain. A debouch is the wider space at the end of a defile. A monadnock or inselberg is a rocky hill, ridge or mountain found in a predominately flat area. A kame is a hill composed of sediments deposited by glaciers. A kettle is a water-filled valley containing sediments deposited by glaciers.

An alas is a valley with steep sides formed by the melting of permafrost. It may contain a lake. A lake is a lake.

An archipelago is a series of islands. An atoll is a circular reef with a lagoon in the middle, formed when a volcanic island sinks into the ocean. An isthmus is a narrow strip of land connecting two other pieces of land. A strait is a channel of water between two land masses.


And a horse is a horse, of course.




*Thank you Wikipedia and Wiki Commons

Ambivalence.
I think that's my favourite word. Or at least based on my definition of it. Ambivalence, the way I intuit it, is not about uncertainty, it's about feeling strongly about two opposing concepts. I imagine a line, or a metal pipe. I imagine bending it in ways that purists and bureaucrats would frown on, until the two ends meet, tensely, but with intention; the poles perspiring in resistance. I like being there.
But that was a tangent. This post isn't about ambivalence. It's about action. It's about my ambivalence to action.

I kind of straddle the line between being really active and really... not. Most people who know me would probably say I'm pretty active, and in broad strokes it's certainly true- I'm constantly squirming to do something or go somewhere, I work multiple jobs*, I have a really short attention span, I get depressed when I'm bored...
But I surprise myself constantly because in all these little ways, I am consistently able to do nothing for long periods of time, and do it really well. In fact, I often find myself actively seeking this out, clearing my schedule and opening up a time and space to do nothing. Everyone thinks that travel is so adventurous, so "active," but one of my favourite things about it is getting on a bus for 8-10 hours and dedicating half a day to staring out the window. When I go to visit my grandparents in Etobicoke, I don't even bring an mp3 player for the 1.5 hr commute, I just sit and stare at things: people, passing trees... poles. I savour these quiet times between places, when there are no distractions and I'm forced to shut my mind off and just enjoy the ride.

All my hobbies operate on the same ambivalent principle. I've come to recognize them as experimental adventures in stillness; activities of non-activity. They are pastimes that teach me how to live in real time.

Take scuba diving, for instance. Diving is the only sport I know of where the less energy you exert, the better your perform. It is a sport that's about 10% physical ability and 90% mental fitness. It has two golden rules: Remain calm and Breathe. If you don't remain calm, you run out of air and have to surface. If you don't breathe, or try to hold your breath, your lungs will rupture and you die. So, as in life, remain calm, breathe, and you'll do just fine.
Diving also has the added bonus of making you feel like you are One with the Force, it's the best real life example of positive thinking I know of. When you want to descend, all you have to do is think it. Think down, and exhale deeply... and down you go, like magic. Think up and inhale, magically you rise...

I take to hiking and canoeing for the same reasons, it's moving meditation for the body that teaches me something, in this case, how to focus mentally. It's about planting feet and oars, one step at a time. It's about the mindlessness of repetition, an appreciation for muscles and ligaments, focusing on the minute, the trivial, the inconsequential. It's a mindlessness that is decidedly different from just relaxing with a book on the beach. It's that metal pipe of ambivalence again; pushing your body so hard that your mind goes comatose.

I've just spent the last 3 hours applying for jobs, and I have to say- minus the prettiness and the physical exertion... it's kind of the same. Mindless, trivial, inconsequential. You forget yourself. You go on Auto Pilot and just do it for the sake of doing something. And you know that all this time and effort could be for nothing, but you're ok with that. It's almost... meditative.
There's supposed to be a line there; there's supposed to be a mindlessness that's good and a mindlessness that's bad, and I'm supposed to know- to feel- the difference... but all my definitions are blurry; I don't seem to discern.

I think I'm too in love with the Process. I honestly get no satisfaction out of whether anything ever materializes**... maybe that's dangerous, but I guess I just never feel like the result adds to or takes away from what I've put into something. And I guess that's why I never get anything done... I'm just Sisyphusian by nature. (Note to Self: pick up a copy of Camus' Myth of Sisyphus... I think he's onto something)

But but... Then I recognize that I'm actually like this when I'm focusing on work too. You get into a zone.... mindful mindlessness. Doing something starts to feel like doing nothing. The ends of the metal pipe are kissing again.


* ... or none, as the case may be
**A few notes on The Process:
1. I am writing a lot these days, just not finishing anything... (this entry itself feels like a bunch of parts that don't quite make up a whole...)
2. I'm getting too enamoured with the Process of job-hunting, should try to, uh, set a goal or something

I've been shamelessly obsessed with So You Think You Can Dance for about a year now... so dance is on the brain. This is awesome. Spoken word dancing should be the next new thing (along with capoeira martial arts films and breaking to classical music). Me likes...




That is all.

Oh Toronto.

I'm back in the southern True North, basking in the cool summer sun, happily munching on grilled meat and sipping (yes, sipping) Canadian beer.

Back in the warm, cozy cradle of toronto indie music, tdot beats, rep cinemas and art films, street festivals and community dinners, great food, great films, great music, great taste in everything, and great people.

I love this city for all that and more. Yes, it's true, Toronto is busy... but it's busy in a way that is so much healither than the way Asia is busy. Here, people don't pour their energy into their useless 9-5 jobs (unless those jobs are wicked cool and not useless at all), they pour energy into creative, pro-active, community-giving ways of life. People here dare to dream, and it is beautifully inspiring, especially if you're a lazyass half-start like me. This city amazes me.

But I wouldn't be me if I didn't have at least a minor neurotic twitch at the thought of being here again. Coming home is always a little traumatic. If I travel for longer periods of time than most it's because I love the feeling of coming back to this city and having it look slightly unfamiliar... that it can look unfamiliar to me is so exciting. Everything ordinary is given this thin coat of newness and that potential for discovery is so full...

At the moment, Toronto is half living up to this promise of discovery. I'm living in a new hood and getting to know my neighbourhood, I'm discovering new bike roots* and avoiding job hunting by playing in my new garden. On the other hand, I speak the language and most things feel... old. Or rather, everything's the same, and I feel old. Sigh...

Everyone's been asking whether I'm happy to be back, and it's really a hard one to answer. My standard answer is that 'happy' isn't exactly the right word, but I know that it's right to be back. I'm kind of sorting data as I type here, but on a personal note, I feel like I need to "settle down," and by that I refer mostly to internal geography, not external. There are things I need to settle within myself, and Toronto seems the safest and most supportive place to do that. I'm not broken by any means, but I've realized that the challenges of travel and displacement have kinda acted as decoy distractors, they come at the expense of other challenges I'm ignoring, am happy to ignore...

I had a conversation with someone recently, about the idea of wholesale change, of displacing yourself, and why we do it. And we both hit on this one reason- we do it to prove we can do it. There's nothing like diving into a foreign situation, and watching yourself rise to the challenge to give you an incredible- and incredibly addictive- rush of "Yay, Im Awesome!"ness. And then that becomes the easiest way to feel awesome, so suddenly you're doing it all the time and you get all cracked out on this Awesome drug and you can't stop....

So you come down from your Awesome drug and you go home and you find yourself In Transition again, and you're familiar with this place but it's the one place that never stays the same. And so you undergo these familiar/unfamiliar rites of coming home, the settling part, when the universe trembles and pushes and figures out where to fit you into a life that has gone on without you for 2 years. You feel like a triangle shape being manhandled by a fat-fingered kid; you're not sure whether Jolly Bo Gumption here is going to slip you smoothly into the triangle hole or try to jam you stubbornly into the square cutout. There's fear there, you can't help but look back. But there's also this other thing, some sort of inner acceptance that enabled you to go away in the first place. You'll fucking deal. And you'll do it well. Awesome.

And then...

*an honest ta gawd typo, almost but not quite as good as "scene of changery"

The first thing you'll hear about Pulau Derawan and the Sangalaki Archipelago in East Kalimantan (...if you hear anything at all) is that it's a pain in the ass to get to. The second thing you'll probably hear is that it is worth all the pain and more.

This place is magic. There are no cars on Derawan, no ATMs, no money changers, no internet cafes, no German schnitzel, no Muesli breakfasts, and no electricity during the day. Hardly any tourist infrastructure at all. Just a handful of losmens, some exceedingly smiley locals and a very out-of-place, fancy-shmance dive resort that is always empty. Oh, and a few hundred turtles, pristine coral and tropical fish to keep you company. Yes, it's as good as it sounds. These tiny little islands are... it's like... well they're just completely unspoiled havens of pure underwater WEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

I really can't explain it better than that. But to give you an idea of what I mean, here's a breakdown of my week.

Friday
Snorkeled with dozens of manta rays in the plankton-rich waters off the coast of Sangalaki. Came so close to these graceful majestic creatures that, on more than one occasion, I thought I would get clubbed in the head with their giant wings. Thankfully, they saw me at the last minute and swooned past me, all stealth bomber styles. If my mouth wasn't clutching a snorkel, my jaw would've been perma-dropped all day. They were beautiful beyond words.

Saturday
Did one of the craziest dives of my life at Barracuda Point near Kakaban. The dive entailed dropping down 30 meters into a very strong current, getting pushed mercilessly along the coral wall, and then, at the sound of the guide's signal, swimming furiously across the current to calmer waters (or risk getting pushed down to the 50m-60m mark by a raging down current!!) I'm not a very strong swimmer, so I was nervous as hell before entering the water- especially because the equipment was rather sketchy and I didn't have a depth gauge... but once in the water, it was pretty fun. My dive partner and I even struck a Superman pose as we flew along. The coral wall along the calmer bit is gorgeously intact with loads of fish abound.

During the dive break, we took our snorkeling gear into Kakaban Lake. The lake consists of warm brackish water (both sea water and fresh water), which makes for an interesting species soup. An ice age about 12,000 years ago transformed the waters into a landlocked marine lake, with a bed of sea water at the bottom. Millions of stingless jellyfish roam the lake, a specially-evolved species that was able to survive due to lack of natural predators. Millions. You couldn't swim a single metre without bumping into twenty of them. The mangrove forest that hugs the lake also added to the fairy tale feel of the island- the tree roots were covered in coral! Weird magic!

Sunday
Went down to the beach on Derawan and watched a few giant female sea turtles struggle up on shore under the bright waxing moon. Watched one choose a choice spot, dig a hole and lay a few dozen eggs. Then watched it toss the eggs like salad, using its back flippers to throw them around and bury them in the sand.

Monday
Stretched out in my hammock, stared at the sea, read, and napped with vigour.

Tuesday
Feasted on coconuts fresh from the tree, delivered to me by two happy, charming Indonesian brothers (erly and henri) who have the curious distinction of being able to speak both Bahasa Indonesia (obviously) and... French. Not a word of English. They were my ideal language skills practice partners. Communicated in Frahasa Indonesia for most of the afternoon. Took a sunset canoe ride along the coast of Derawan and was smiled and waved at enthusiastically by Derawan locals.

Wednesday
Went back to Kakaban and tried to capture the magic on camera...



Thursday
Snorkeled around Derawan and found crazy abundance of marine life- crocodile fish, scorpionfish, morays, lionfish, nemos... Spent more time in hammock. Practiced being lazy.

Derawan was just... ridiculous. If you love sea creatures and the simple life, I can't think of another place that could be more fulfilling. It does take a minimum of 2 days to get here, but the upside is, you won't want to leave anytime soon. If you're used to easy traveling, well, it's not easy... Almost no one speaks English, and unless you're willing to pay the big bucks, no one is going to organize anything for you. But considering the reward, this place is a bloody gift. It's amazing. Go. GO NOW.

The Nitty-Gritty Details
Getting There:
There are 2 ways to approach Derawan. The easier way is via Malaysian Borneo. From Tawau, take the ferry to Tarakan (145MYR). Then it's Tarakan to Tanjung Selor by ferry (80,000INR); Tanjung Selor to Berau (70,000INR) by kijang (share taxi); and Berau to Tanjung Batu by kijang (60,000INR). From Tanjung Batu, you'll need to charter a speedboat to Pulau Derawan. The boatmen typically want 200-250,000INR per boat, so it's a good deal if you can find folks to split it with.
From the south, it's a 16-18 hour bus ride from Balikpapan, the capital of East Kalimantan, to Berau.

Being There:
Rooms: 75,000-200,000 per room (I stayed at Losmen Danakan, which was wonderful)
Food: Typically 12,000-20,000 per meal. There is a great restaurant closer to the end of town (going towards the mosque) that has a gaudy pink exterior. The ladies here don't speak English but they serve fresh fish that you pick yourself and a host of super yummy vegetables, tofu and tempeh. Their Nasi Kuning (coconut saffron rice with fish steak and sauce) is sooo good. Danakan does meals too, but I like to spread my money around...
The Fun Stuff: To get to Sangalaki and Kakaban means finding a boat, ie. a local fisherman willing to take you out for the day. Again, there's power in numbers. Typically, boats run for 600,000 to Sangalaki and as much as 800,000 to Kakaban, but if you know who to ask, the prices can come down significantly. Don't be afraid to negotiate. There's a guy named Tiar (I call him Manta Orang) who owns a really slow boat, but he's a lovely lovely man and definitely knows how to spot the mantas. His house is a few left of Losman Danakan's, the one with the circular steps. He doesn't speak a word of English.

Diving and snorkeling equipment can be rented from the dive shop at Losman Danakan, but I personally think they suck. I didn't do a lot of dives out here because I was pretty unimpressed with them. The diving equipment is sketchy, their attitude was horrible and they're quite expensive. It's about 500,000 for 2 dives, not including boat rental, wetsuit, torches or anything else, so it adds up. They're very money-grabby, which is a personal quality I happen to hate. What's more, unless you're into crazy currents, there is almost nothing you can't see just by snorkeling (the mantas came right to the surface, and most of the fish are no more than 3-5m down). The snorkeling right off the jetty on Derawan is excellent.

Erly and Henri run a mini golf course on the far side of town (past the mosque). It's super fun and they are lovely boys to chat with if you speak French (or B. Indonesia). That side of town is also where the sun sets and the beach is quite nice. Watch out for falling coconuts.

More photos here. That is all.

My time in Sipadan (world renowned dive site) and Danum Valley (one of the last remaining swathes of primary rainforest in Sabah) was really defined by sights and sounds. In Sipadan, everything was bigger and more abundant than anywhere else I've dived- the turtles and fish were ginormous and the schools of fish were overwhelming. In Danum, hornbills, warblers, cicadas, gibbons and orangutans provided the lively soundtrack for our jungle walks. I'm having a hard time writing about it because those experiences feel really... tactile, like you really had to be there to get it: the sweat and the sounds and the leeches; the need for ninja stealth when looking for wildlife and the anticipation of spotting an animal; the giant, century-old trees towering above you; the quiet awe of being surrounded by a giant swirling school of barracuda; the jedi mind trick of scuba diving and being able to control your movement with your breath... Words just aren't cutting it, so maybe photos and recordings will do better (the recording ends with a gibbon duet :)

We pick up where we left off; Our Intrepid Heroine (OIH!) is in Borneo, making her way east across the Malaysian state of Sabah. Determined to indulge in a sumptuous diet of Mountain, Oceans and Jungle (or MoJO, if you will), OIH! arrives in Sukau, a sleepy village that sits on the banks of Sungai Kinabatangan, the longest river of the region. The area is home to a cornocopia of Bornean wildlife; orangutans, gibbons, hornbills, and the endemic proboscis monkey are all here in mad abundance.


I became an instant nature geek (I think Borneo has this effect on people). I learned how to identify the mating call of a female gibbon, recognize the dominant male in a proboscis monkey harem, differentiate between various species of hornbills, and name loads of other beautiful tropical birds by sight.

The Lower Kinabatangan is teeming with life. I've never had so many successive days of feeling so awed and humbled by nature, EVERY DAY I saw, heard or learned something new and incredible. It helped that I met a guide there who was also a total nature geek. Jamil had worked as a photographer/videographer for conservation NGOs for over 10 years and was "taking a break." He was a brilliant guide and just a generally happy and adventurous chap. He'd once climbed a tree and slept in an abandoned orangutan nest just to try it out for a day.

The Lower Kinatabatangan offers the best opportunity in Sabah to see animals in their own natural habitat, but it's a bit of a catch 22. The irony is that the relatively common sightings of wild primates is only possible due to the massive deforestation of the area- we can only spot the animals because their natural habitat has been so incredibly devastated.

We turn to the enemy- palm oil. Over half of Borneo's forests have either been logged or burnt down, much of it replaced by ever-profitable palm oil plantations. Palm oil is used as a cheap substitute for vegetable oil, and is found in everything from soap to cosmetics to food. As of late, it has also been touted as the EU's biofuel solution (another display of environmental shortsightedness a la ethanol). Malaysia and Indonesia are the biggest producers of palm oil in the world (together they make up some 85% of global palm oil production) and all this economic stimulation is directly threatening one of the most biodiverse pockets of the world. Borneo has already lost almost half of its primary rainforest, and Indonesia's deforestation rate has earned it the honour of being the 3rd largest carbon emitter after the US and China.

You can't blame Malaysia and Indonesia for thinking this is a good idea. Ok, maybe Malaysia (that's Strike 2, Sabah), but Indonesia is pretty poor and frankly just needs some- ANY- economic leg to stand on. For both countries, it's essentially a double bling- they log the forest and make a killing on the hardwood, and then they set up palm oil plantations, which are fruitful and immensely profitable.

I really had no idea how much sweat my body was capable of producing until I came to Borneo. It's mind boggling, really. I mean, I don't want to turn this into a big philosophical thing, but there's a certain zenful rite of passage that everyone travelling through the tropics must undergo. You go from furiously wiping your brow, your neck, your upper lip and any other part of you that's publicly acceptable to wipe, to just letting the sweat slide gracefully off your chin (sometimes into your dinner); from being completely disgusted with the smell of your sweaty, rank body to recognizing that smell but accepting it as your own. eau de you.

There was a plan. The Plan was to hike into Batad, a small rice terrace village only accessible by foot, and then spend a few days going further afield, staying in remote villages and traveling deep into the valley before popping back out onto the main highway. The Cordilleras in Northern Luzon is a beautiful stretch of eye candy; a mountainous region shining an unreal neon green. What's most amazing about this place is that its beauty is entirely man-made. Thousands of years ago, the Ifugao people of the region started hacking into the hills surrounding them and planting rice. They devised an ingeneous irrigation system and in the process created hill after valley after hill after valley of terraced neon green fields.