Travelling Poetry; Words are Prayers

Words are prayers I carry in my heart, rarely sharing them. Until now.
I travel with my eyes open and a notebook handy. The seasons, the trees, the breeze...I write my prayers upon them.
I live this way in still, untravelling moments too. Living in Daylesford, Australia bring the blessings of a rush of unwritten and half uttered words to my daily life. This month has seen the Words in Winter festival celebrate that art of wordsmithing, and I love that this town gets on board. To honour this I am peeling back the cover of my modesty and sharing some mumblings.

Hanging high from bare branches

The skin of old trees

Wait for time to break their fall

Winter day in Daylesford, VIC 

this place has not

forgotten

about colours

no urban palettes

of grey or coal

char

and coal

this place is not

afraid

of colours

Nimbin and Uki, NSW

Verdant

         Ripe

                     Fecund

And the rain...

Mullumbimby, NSW

Dreaming of temples

Hidden in the hills

A falling leaf...

Winter in the arms

of the trees

The warm smell

of incense

In the

cool air...

Missing Nara...

First snow, Nara

Travelling Spirituality

Part of my interest in starting up this blog is to share experiences of the places and ways in which travellers (of the land or astral kind) have encountered spirituality.
It might have been on a pilgrimage trail, or a chance encounter with a spiritual teacher. Perhaps you had a vision.

Walking a local trail in Nara, Japan a few years ago I found this guy. I asked for some guidance, gave him a tip and took a snap which now embodies my idea of spirituality on the road. It pops up in the strangest of places and often when you least expect it.

Nara, Japan

Niigatsudo, Nara.

In 2008 I made my way to the Thaipusam Hindu festival in Kuala Lumpur. This for me marked a long journey after a backpacking trip which took an unexpected turn after a friend survived a near fatal motorbike accident, resulting in an amputation. By the time I got to KL I was emotionally raw. Witnessing the devotion of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who went to physically challenging extremes, piercing skin and flesh with metal and carrying burdensome loads, tongues ablaze, all for the devotion of their lord. It was awe-inspiring and left me carrying the burden of my own emptiness after such an emotionally draining few months.
   I was grieving the recent death of a grandmother who had raised me and feeling the gap left after my friend returned home to recover, in fewer pieces than he had begun. I had given myself to his caring, and now the loss of this left a hole I needed to fill, beginning with the caring of myself, of my soul.

Thaipusam made me question the lengths I was prepared to go to myself, in order to test my faith...I still ask myself this and am yet to find the answer. Perhaps the answer is in the journey itself.

The devotees pinnacle; Batu Caves

Trance states make for thirsty souls

We came to know, we leave to remember...

The Travelling Book

I was reading an online discussion this morning on the e-book as a replacement for a “real” book, which in itself is a topic which in itself is becoming a little tiresome. However, what has sent me off on a slight tangent is in response to a backpacker who suggested that the potential to carry a smaller device which can hold a huge amount of books within it, as opposed to filling your backpack with burdensome books is what winds him over. Others then replied to his post in agreement that carrying around books when travelling is just problematic.

Where I would like to take this though, is not down the road of e-books versus traditional books, but rather; to what degree do electronic devices take away from the experience of backpacking?

Leaving digital cameras out of this for the sake of staying on track, is the ease of access delivered by e-books not taking away a certain experience henceforth lost to the e-book backpacker? The search for book shops in small towns after nauseating bus rides, the thrill of finding one and the chance to read a book you never knew existed; I live for these moments on the road. You might need to stock up for the times between book shops, sure, but it makes those precious paper worlds in your pack that much more meaningful. Not to mention the flipside being that you are less paranoid about them being stolen!

Socially they allow for greater interaction on the road with the possibility of exchange, of which is far more personal when using real items. Too many books for your backpack? Think charitably and give some away. Take out some clothes, you’re meant to be a little dirty on the road.

Finally and for me more importantly, is the fact you leave yourself open to discovering new and exciting tomes which you might never have found if not purely by that chance discovery in an unexpected cafe and bookstore in Laos, or in that backpacker hostel social room in Cambodia. My bookshelves still hold a couple I could not help but shove into my pack and carry all the way home.

Favourites:

A Fortune Teller Told Me, by Tiziano Terzani.

Mama Tina, by Christina Noble.

A Book On The Train, Thailand. 2007.



Langkawi 2007

Anyone else got books they couldn’t leave behind?