more random thoughts, ... Moulmain... "The elephant" and "The Litany".

monday 13Jul09 - Walking along the path from the " Breeze " guest house to the pagoda at the top of Moulmain hill takes one through a section of old trees covered in fuzzy green tropical growth. They meet overhead and form a big tunnel. Between the trunks restaurants are set up, in one of them 10 round hot plates sit on red hot coals, on each one a guy pours dough spreading it paper thin. In no time at all the hot plate cooks it and it's ready to be taken off, more poured on. The finished ones are collected by another guy and at the end of the row of hot plates is a young dude furiously preparing a large vat of dough. Both hands in semi liquid white dough sloshed about. It kind of clings and flows like the green slime you can buy in toyshops. The pace is fast and quick and lively and lots of talking, laughing. My turn to stare in wonder and watch the spectacle. they speed up even more as they see me and I get offered a round paper thin backed whatever-it-is to try... It's good. People amble about, many monks from the monasteries lining the 300m approach up the hill. There  are small shrines set in the walls of houses the bricks old and red, moss overgrown. The buddha statues gleaming gold. A young girl presents offerings, flowers and woven things, incense...to a small shrine in the moss covered brick wall. The moss really loves the rainy season, it's thick and GREEN, soft and juicy looking. At the start of the covered walkway to the top it's shoes off for those 300m - avoid the one or two dog turds on the way. (That's why i got a torch for the way back in darkness this time). Tourists are so low in numbers that they are somewhere between just stopping to be a curiosity and someone to practice 'hello" on if you're a kid or a young monk.Adults don't do anything. Rarely does anyone offer me a taxi ride, and then only if it looks like i might actually want one. ---o(O)o--- At the market today I'm watching a watch-maker. He takes appart those electronic digital el cheapo watches and fixes them. There isn't any part that he doesn't know how to disassemble and reassemble. Stuff that no one in Oz would ever bother fixing. I sign to him that I'm after a watch, just the round watch part. The watchmaker presents me with a Swiss pocket watch....Oh My GOD, temptation ! How does that song go again about temptation ? With a little bit  With a little bit of luck ..... you'll give right in. I had a little bit of luck. I've had a thing for pocket watches all my life. This one is the real thing, mechanical movement. Swiss made, - open the back and see the solid workmanship. We bargain, by writing down the bids. 40,000 Kyat is his opening salvo. 15,000 Kyat my reply. Laughs. ok I get the sense that there is some substance in this watch. 19,000 Kyat is my next bid He's confident, interested, but the price is genuinely too low. 25,000 kYat the next offer. A gentle shake of the head. Time to talk of other things, take a break. "Where are you from ?" "Australia." "Ah Australia good, Myanmar bad." "Australia good," I agree,"Myanmar nice". what can i say ? a bit more of this and then 30,000 - "Final price" I declare firmly. I mean it. A bit of shaking of the head, some thinking, then nodding, ok, you got it. I offer some US dollars. No, he prefers Kyat, it would be too hard and too much hassle to change it. "Go Yangon" he says points to the dollar notes. ok fair enough, I count out 30 x 1000 Kyat. the highest bank note is 1000 Kyat in Myanmar. for 100 USD you get about 210,000 Kyat, roughly US $1 = 1100 Kyat, or 1:1000 for ready reckoning. Which is a brick of notes. The price must have been right, because after 'the transaction" he asks me "La-pay-yee ?" "Yes, La-pay-yee". He nodds to one of the boys who races off and gets the super strong, super sweet, condensed milk brew of tea that rivals coffee in intensity. They motion me to stir it as they hand it to me. No, i prefer to let the mountains of sugar and condensed milk stay sitting at the bottom. The watchmaker is really unhappy with his country. It's a common sentiment. If i lived here as a national of Myanmar, i'd probably feel the same. i wander off, happy with my purchase, but i wonder, his discontent struck a note in me too. Yet i can see much that he has here, that he would lose in Oz, or any super-clean super-organized First World country. Yet he does not know what he has until he loses it. Aren't i the same ? Don't I complain about my job at times ? and bitch about the outbreak of bureaucracy-mania  and the rampage of the fear-mongering-for-$$$-profit-tacticians in Oz ? Yes same really. Except it IS really a lot worse in Myanmar. Life is tough here. Seems we need to leave something - step outside it, perhaps even lose it, to know it's true value from a different perspective. Some would say that is the whole point of it all. Some of us need to step out further than others... the cycle of the gaining of wisdom the sages tell us. The journey of the fool, who sets out only to arrive where he started from, but now he has wisdom.... let's hope so. YOu have to gain it all and lose it all, to know it all. i guess that's my counterbalance to my overly romantic honeymoon view of things here. I am aware of the other realities about Burma. YOu only need to mention 'Bu.rma' and "The Lad.y" in any English speaking country and watch the predictable and routine reaction run its course of righteous moral outrage, like a litany of 'the sins of the generals'. I've heard most of it, I could probably add specifics to it from my own findings, I believe much of it is true, yet it is but one true perspective of many true perspectives. HOwever, i tend to focus too much on the bum side of things in Australia already. So therefore I need to focus on the positive, knowing full well that this too is only ONE of many true angles of  that very same elephant. So call me indulgent, or romantic if you will.... yet knowing the contents of 'the litany' better than most people, when i am at the top of Moulmain hill, at sunset and the rain drizzles, the humid air wraps around and the chants of monks drifts across from the distance,.......... is that not beautiful ? In the temple complex next to the biggest golden Pagoda, a group of female Uni students smile and egg each other on, gather up their courage to talk to me, offer me a bisquit from the box they have between them. Of course i take one, I smile and chat. They have all learned English, the theory, they know it is the lingua  franca of the world, the internet and any chance of leaving this country for a better life. But here is a real live foreigner, and it is a chance to try out all those years of theory on him. So the courageous ones reach out further and ask me where am i from. "Australia. ...." "Are you students ?" i ask, "University student ?" I point to one girl. "......" "......" "Yes". And after a few sentences it is enough, they retreat as the 'heroines-who-talked-to-the-foreigner' and are warmly welcomed back into the safe  circle of their friends. Do these small encounters matter ? Who knows.... but i think so. ---o(O)o--- I was going to stop talking about the Burma question "The Litany" and all that until i got a link from a friend to a Michael Leunig article which I've copied below. It's more like a final concluding comment, by an author who makes the point so well there is nothing for it but to simply quote him in full. I think he would understand and take it as a compliment. - link to original article here  or full text below: "Epiphanies of man to man" by Michael Leunig July 11, 2009 It is so beautifully plain, the things an older man may tell a younger man. CARS mock me and the cold suburban winds harass as I try to cross the busy road. The vexations of winter are upon the city, and outside the supermarket a dreadlocked young man is earnestly waving pamphlets at the bitter evening. He's an environmental evangelist on the lookout for sinners, and as I pass he seizes the moment. "Do you care about the environment?" "Yes, I do." "What are you doing about it?" "I'm doing as much as I can." "Yes, but what are you actually doing?" "Well, if you must know, I'm planting trees." "Where are you planting these . . . trees?" His taunting manner hardens, his detective eyes narrow, his silver nose-ring glistens insolently. "What sort of trees?" continues the would-be guilt-maker. I take a deep breath and a long pause. I look away. I look into the past. Then turning to my rude inquisitor once more, I announce that he is about to receive a piece of advice - "advice from an older man to a younger man". What has come over me? Suddenly I am channelling words from a bygone era. They flow like water from an old underground main that has suddenly cracked - words that sound deeply bizarre in this hip and grungy modern suburb. The eco-warrior looks perplexed and incredulous. And so I tell him. I tell him to treat strangers with respect. I tell him that if he really cares for the environment, he had better care for the human environment. I tell him that a friendlier world is a more sustainable world. I tell him off. Momentarily he swells and bristles in defiance, but it doesn't really work for him; there is no point - the meeting of minds has been too weirdly off the scale. A small group of onlookers has become strangely solemn. As the sordid urban scene deflates and dims, I walk away wondering why it has to be like this. Oh dear - the things an older man may tell a younger man. * * * Soon I am back home in the bush, standing near my shed in the sensuous peace of a great drizzling fog. Through the mist, the shape of a man appears. It's Jim, our good neighbour and husband of Marg, plodding up the hill towards me with a huge grin, and looking as damp and happy as a man could ever be. He is wearing his old farm jacket - held together with decades of mud and mending - and darting around him like a sprite is his young sheepdog, Patch. Jim has been on the earth at least a decade longer than I but has been a farmer for many, many centuries. "Out looking for your dog, Jim?" I greet him. "Blimey, no - I just got lost in the fog," says Jim with a big chuckle. But no way was he lost; farmers with so much Scottish ancestry don't get lost in fogs. Jim was out wandering through the mist and rain simply for the purpose of rapture - communing with God and totally immersed in the miracle of rainfall at the right time. It was written all over his face. It's been a long time since we had a real winter. He was loving it. We stand in the drizzle discussing the rain, remarking what a pleasure it is to see the creeks running and the country soaking it up. He tells me of the great winters past and all manner of hilarious fiascos and mistakes that come with them. "People who don't make mistakes don't make anything," says Jim. He is a wealth of funny old wisdoms. He grows them on his farm. Once we were perched high up on ladders together, painting the spouting at the local hall. "Jim," I said, "I think the trick with working on ladders is to not look down." He had a few more thoughtful dips and dabs with his paintbrush, and then, very slowly and emphatically, he replied with the following gem: "No mate, when you're up ladders the trick is to not FALL down." Ah yes, there it is again - so beautifully plain and simple; the thing that an older man may tell to a younger man. * * * Falling down is a very big subject, and so is the concept of downfall. None of us escapes, and I have had my share of both. Once I was thrown from a horse near a country town where I lived in western Victoria. That night, in a state of extreme pain, I was taken to a local doctor, a man much older than I who was wrapped in a silk dressing gown and a large cloud of alcohol, and he advised me to go home, stop grizzling and have an aspirin, but this didn't help. The next morning found me sleepless and miserable in the casualty department of the regional hospital, where I was attended to by a very nervous young doctor who didn't seem to know how to set the wrist in plaster. Observing this embarrassing impasse, the nurse discreetly slipped away and returned a few minutes later with Bob the cleaner - a thin, stooped man well beyond retirement age, wearing a brown uniform and carrying a broom. With great humility and tact, and still holding on to the broom, Bob gently instructed the doctor on how to set the broken bone. In the clear frugal voice of a gentle old bushman, the cleaner talked him quietly through the entire process without the doctor's dignity or authority being compromised at all. In due course the wrist healed perfectly. * * * The old might reveal startling truths to the young, but what the old may reveal to each other can be miraculous. When I lived for a few years by the bay in Melbourne, I became aware of an elderly man who would give me a gentle smile of recognition in the street whenever we passed. It was a nodding acquaintance but I think he knew my work as an artist. His friendliness seemed considered and was made special to me by his dignified and intelligent bearing, but strangely we had never stopped to introduce ourselves and talk. Finally we bumped into each other in the supermarket one morning and could hold our silence no longer. After some general banter by the biscuit shelf, I asked what he had in store for the day. "Oh, I'll be meeting up with a few old blokes. We get together occasionally and tell lies to each other about the war." "You were in the war?" "I was. I flew Lancaster bombers over Germany." I understood something of what that might mean to an intelligent man and felt a pang of sorrow that must have shown for a moment on my face. We parted ways in the biscuit aisle, but a minute later he returned with a rather sweet and awkward look in his eye. "Let me tell you something," he said, "I must tell you this. I think you'll understand . . ." And surrounded by groceries, I listened to an astonishing tale. "You see, I've been having these terrible nightmares for a few years - same nightmare over and over; I dream that I'm flying over Hamburg on a bombing raid and there's this Luftwaffe night fighter on my tail - and I'm doing everything I can to lose him but he keeps coming after me and firing and I can't get clear. Then I wake up in a terrible panic, and it's been bloody awful, these dreams. So I was getting some help with all this, getting professional help and going along to this old fella who talks me through the whole business and all sorts of things every week and it's been good. He's been really wonderful. Anyway here's the amazing part. A few weeks back I'm going through it with this fella, who by the way is German by birth, and he suddenly stops me and apologises and tells me that he's about to depart from his professional principles and tell me something important because he can't proceed unless he says it. And then he tells me that at the time I was flying bombing missions over Hamburg, he was in the Luftwaffe flying night fighters in the same part of the sky . . ." There is a moment of silence. "And what happened? What did you say?" "Well, we didn't say anything. We just sat and looked at each other for a while - and then we had a few tears together. You can imagine. It was OK. It was good. Who would believe such a thing? I felt I should tell you. I thought you would understand." link to original article here  I hope Michel Leunig will understand :-). ---o(O)o--- If you are still reading this, then WOW ! should i have not talked to the Uni students because their government was bad ? "sorry girls, can't talk to you, gotta boycott you until the guys at the top, become good boys". my money goes to the people in the street, the motorcycle taxi drivers, the small food shops, the local guest house... the owner of which is supporting his daughter in ....Australia ! talk about circulating the money around. Anyone wanting to dive into this evergreen controversy the May2009 Lonely planet book on Burma/Myanmar gives a very clear, brief, but well written account of the major issues, arguments for and against etc.... ---o(O)o--- Most tourists here come from non-English speaking countries. "The litany" there is different. - see theory of "The 3 top media themes for each country" - go on someone ask me what it is, then i can sprout off about it like a NZ geyser :-) i'll be brief, promise he he he. cheers Heiko 'dance me to the children who are asking to be born....'  - Leonard Cohen Haiko's - blog list here or direct: life42  or backpacking or  stories I walk with her, and I hear the gentle beating of mighty wings.... I hear the sound of her wings.... and the darkness lifts from my soul...