The journey continues

Well I'm back in Canada. Coming back has not been as difficult as I first feared.   I got to the Ottawa airport and it was rather nostalgic to walk past a Tim Horton's and a Senators hockey game on television.   I think it would have been more shocking if I had to go back to the life I had before but I'm fortunate, I don't.  The question is what do I do next?   The plan had always been to head for Africa to do volunteer work however there was a snag in January that made me hold back.   I stayed in India with the thought that I could join a later session.   The next session begins in late May so they have contacted me.  The timing seems perfect: it's just enough time to rest, get my affairs in order, fill out all the forms and read the material to get ready for departure and go.  It seems perfect but I haven't been able to shake off the negative feeling that I had about the organisation in January.  That is one thing but there is a much deeper menace that had been floating around my head and it's been making it very difficult to make that decision.

I think everyone that knows me and likely everyone that has been reading my blog is aware of just how much I love to write.  What people may not know is that it's been a passion of mine ever since I was a very little girl.  It may not have showed up in the way of essays but it would have been quite obvious if anyone ever stop to notice the amount of imagination that was constantly brewing in my mind.  For example when I was ten years old I had the whole sequel to ET conjured up and I even had started writing it.  After writing dozens of pages the diary I was writing in disappeared and I was so devastated that I never continued. 

I need to start writing my story and I need to finish it and I have the opportunity and the inspiration to do it right now.  The problem I'm facing with this seemingly fortunate situation is fear.  I fear failing.  I really have nothing to loose and intellectually I know it but the thought of working on this day and night and putting my blood, sweat and tears in it and then not having my work supported by a publisher gives me an ache in the gut.  I've been voicing this to my support system and of course, I keep getting reminded that everything interesting you do in life is a chance you take.  Success can be define in a million different ways and I have no business being so narrow minded about this.  I just came back from a world that made me both loose and find myself in the moment and the fear of outcome isn't part of any equation.

I could just forget all about this non-sense and go to Africa.  I'm pretty happy no matter what I do, right?

I'm a great believer in signs from the Universe or God or the higher power or whatever it is that one decides to call it and I got the sign I needed to do this.  When I was in high school I had a French teacher I really liked.  I wasn't very good with French, my spelling was atrocious.  One day we had an essay to write during class but I was absent.  The next day this teacher told me that I needed to do the essay at home but I could take a couple of days, there was no great hurry.  He always gave us some very interesting topics to write about, different then the average "article" type essay that we were usually given.  This one was very simple, he gave us the first sentence "He just turned 16."  I think in all my years in school it was one of the most concentrated efforts I had ever given anything I had to do at home.  I wrote and changed things around and wrote more.  I handed in a 500 word thriller a la Stephen King.  I was nervous about the reaction.  The next day after class he had my assignment corrected and ready to give back.  I had a C+ which is pretty sad when you think I had two days to get the spelling right however he looked at me in the eye and said "you're heading for publishing".  Back here in the present times I took a train to my parents from Ottawa last weekend.  There is a change in trains in Montreal and for some reason even though I got on the train early and I had the choice I choose to sit on the side of the aisle with two seats instead of the one with single seats.  I sensed, no word of a lie, that someone interesting was meant to sit next to me.  The man who sat next to me is a musician, he no longer plays himself but he writes songs for recording artist in Montreal.  A professional writer.  I told him where I was from and he proceeded to tell me that he is very good friends with non other then my old French high school teacher.  I smiled and nodded my head to myself, yeah, of course.

I finally took the dive today.  I told the NGO that I am not available to leave in May.  Now I got nothing ahead of me but time.

The opposite of home sick

I'm currently in Dharamkot, a stone throw from the Dalai Lama temple.  Unfortunately I feel sick, the last 3 days have been a wash, I barely left my room.  This morning I feel better but let's just say that there are signs that I am still sick.

I started getting issues around the time that we started our journey here, the place that is for all 4 of us our last destination.  After this Inga and Jacek goes back to Poland, Joonas goes back to Finland and I go back to Canada.

The evening that we got here we went to a cafe that served cakes and good coffee, very strange for India.  The floor was clean and even, the chairs matched, the corners of the table were rounded and perfect, the staff was attentive and quiet, the lighting was soft and serene, the patrons were reading books with crossed legs, everything perfectly sanitized... the exact picture of a snazzy cafe you can find in the evening anywhere around the Western world.  Mcleod Ganj is different than the rest of India, it is about 2000m up in the Himalayas and tourism here seems to cater to a more middle class, middle age, trekking community, with more money than the average backpacker.  After being the visible minority for the last 3 months (since Goa) I can't help but notice that there are a lot of white faces here.

As we sat in this sterile environment tired and on the verge of illness Joonas (who's also not well at the moment) and I concurred that we felt a sharp heavy lump in the pit of our stomach, our countries were going to be fishing us out of India soon and this is the world that is waiting for us.  It might seem strange to other for us to feel out of place because there is no one spitting on the floor, no constant beeping from 50 rickshaws around, no view of someone pissing against a wall outside, no merchant outside shouting at the top of his lungs "potatos and oignons", no ripped up dinning chairs that are stained and smelly, no views (or smells) of cows (sometimes small children) taking a dump on the street, no dirty children begging for 5 roupies, no death trap floors with holes and sharp edges, no loud drunk Indian men staring, no heap of hot smelly garbage just outside the door... I could go on for hours listing the quirks that are unimaginable in our countries that are part of the daily life of the 1.2 billion people in India.

I remind the reader of the population because I want to point out that we are often quick to think that we have it right.  Do all these people really have it wrong?  If so why is it that some Westerners come here and end up fearing leaving India more than they feared coming?  I feel that in some ways I'm repeating myself from other blogs but I feel like there is a perceptive here that is different than before, I'm afraid of going back home.  I'm afraid of being bored, I'm afraid of getting comfortable, I'm afraid that I'm going to be sucked back into the 4 walls of a perfect little nest, I'm afraid I'll reach out to new people just to be shut down because they are firmly wedge into their own 4 walls of Western ideology or even worse, they just don't want to be bothered by some strange person.

I've come to the conclusion that it is like this:  if you took the average person's mind with all the confusion, the fears, the dreams, the nightmares, the imagination, the emotional baggage, the love, the bullshit, the color, the incessant chatter etc and used that internal mess to create a world to live in you would have India.  In the West we don't want to see the world in such a real way so we sanitize our outer world.  We constantly try to put controls in place thinking that we can stop bad things from happening.  We throw things away that are good but maybe a bit stained because we don't like to see imperfections even though we are full of them.  India is reality.  There is no hiding from anything here.  I may have had bad days here and I may sometimes think that I've had it with the absurdity of many situations I've encountered but I LOVE having reality stare me in the face.  I feel more real and alive than at any other times in my life and I'm sick at the thought of leaving it behind.

Some people get sick when they get to India, the clear sight of reality is harsh.  Apparently some people get sick leaving it...