Did your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?
How could one conversation with a stranger have such an impact?
The whole world, all of existence seemed to live between our two velveteen bus seats. The landscape, the towns, the island bridge they all passed by without significance. So to did the city shops, and the bus terminal. Oh shitâŠ.waitâŠ. thatâs myyyyy stoppppppppp!!!!!. I excused myself as Henry stood up to let me out and I quickly thanked him for the conversation, legged it to the front of the bus gesticulating wildly. The driver pulled over, his second officer, opening the cargo carrier to give me my backpack, so I could walk the few hundred meters back up the road to the terminal where my red postie bike was parked for the weekend. And then âŠthe bus was gone.
Wowwweeee! I felt like I had just stepped out of a portal. Gathering myself here on the roadside, I was vibrating with a mix of awe and panic, and adrenaline and something else⊠was it⊠hmmm⊠was it loss? How could such an amazing connection happen and then poof! gone in an instant, to zoom away through the traffic. Gone forever.
It had started by chance like many travel conversations do. Henry had sat down next to me on the busy public bus from Khao Lak to Phuket and with earphones playing the Upsteppers, Cash War album, I smiled as he took his seat beside me. Dreamily I watched the Andaman coastline pass by, enjoying the bright morning colours of the ocean and forest. Third track in, I started sneezing, and I heard my neighbour say âGazuntheidâ. This has always been my favourite response to a sneeze, it seems much more appropriate to wish someone good health, rather than blessing them. Although any acknowledgement is always most welcome.
Anyhow, I digress. I responded in German with dank-ashen. âOh are you German?â Henry asked. No I said, I am from Australia. âLovely - I spent some time in Sydneyâ he replied, âwhere are you from in Australia?â. And so went on the most ordinary of starts to the most extraordinary of conversations.
We talked about language and the nature of language, places we had traveled and our joys and challenges of speaking locally.
Henry was a documentary film maker all through the 60s and 70s. He had spent a year and a half living with the shell money makers in the remote Solomon Islands, months with the headhunters of PNG, the Kaluhari bush men, and the Inuit. In those days he and his wife traveled, just the two of them, to remote âprimitiveâ cultures to film for a German commercial channel as well as the ABC. He had filmed a worldwide young genius series which had featured a now lead Australian ballerina, a top American Motorcross champion and an African girl who had kept a fully grown pet lion.Â
His stories took me across the globe and through time. We spoke of his creative process and his challenge of being between worlds. He found it difficult to travel and then integrate back into Austrian life, and he found himself often dancing the compromising line between documentary film making as art-form and commercial product.
This old man epitomised the intrepid, hero explorer of my imagination. Who, dressed in loin cloth, living in thatched jungle hut, would spend the first few weeks of a project with no camera, seeking to understand the community dynamics and building trust and connections. Living with the people he was filming, he sought to immerse in the local culture as much as was possible for an âoutsiderâ. He was a paradox of purpose and influence. He was also a pirate, albeit a kind hearted one, swapping tobacco for tales and taking jewels of knowledge and culture to sell to the wide eyed crowds of Europe.
Henry shared wild stories of sorcery and black magic; men of spirit who he saw call the storming thunder clouds away. Witness to exorcisms and entrancements. He said he did not always have his old school 16mm film camera on hand to record his most profound and surreal experiences. He made apologies to me for the seemingly fantastical nature of one tale, and I found myself saying to him, with full conviction, âI believe in magicâ.
And yes as you can see in the video above, both magic and I can be light and playful and silly. But IÂ often feel the realness of true âseriousâ magic. In small moments; in synchronicity; in nature; and in those gigantic magical moments which speak so deep into the nature of your being, you are overwhelmed with all of the feelings, overwhelmed by the sheer enormity and vastness of that magic.Â
I shared a tale with Henry of one of those big moments. I was in China, present at a healing session my friend had organised. At this session, I sat among four women, holding space and helping with translations. The atmosphere was palpable, alive and pulsating with vibration. It is a tale to share another time, but suffice to say for now, I had only heard of âenergy healersâ before then. The expression âseeing is believingâ pops into my head as I write this. And it holds true, in the sense that my experience during that healing session was magical. To experience this particular healerâs power and witness the transformation and healing process in my friend, was truly compelling. Recalling this experience to Henry, brought an energy into my body that was so strong. An electric vibration.
Henry spoke with a great deal of respect for the cultures and peoples he had visited and with an acknowledgement of the impact of his presence there and his motivations for doing what he did. He spoke of the challenges during his time film-making; of needing to establish an conciliatory relationship with the local shaman/ medicine man/ witch-doctor. Some communities would openly tell him who was who, while in others, it was a far more challenging process. With their first aid supplies and modern medical knowledge, his wife and him, were often considered a threat by the local medicine man. He spoke of meeting magicâmedicine-men who could look you in your eyes and peer straight through you, into your soul and through your mind. Henry had decided early on in his career that he would need to hold himself so strong, to defend against this piercing transmission. The intentions of the magic-men, he conveyed, where not always positive. As I looked across the bus seat, into his eyes, I could see this fighting spirit, still present in his gaze. He said that he learned to construct defensive psychic barriers to protect himself, whilst at the same time, would communicate psychically, his intentions, his respect and his shared humanity.
I reflected to him that in the presence of these powerful magic men, it would take time to open to trust them and their intentions. Henry looked me in the eyes and said, do you think you would be able to protect yourself. Instantly I was aware of my breath and in a moment of suspended time, in the space between my breaths, the inquiry went deep into my being. From this stillness I responded. Yes I said. If I needed to I would not let it in, I would defend. And as Henry smiled at me, I chuckled lightly. Yes I can see you have an inner strength he said. Now, in this very next moment, I felt exposed and vulnerable and at the same time strong and in trust with this stranger. It was a very strong feeling. Quiet in reflection, moments passed, till our conversation flowed to family and friends and more tales of adventure.
As I walked back up the road towards the bus terminal, it had felt so abrupt our parting. One moment connected to the divinity within and in the other, and the next, spat out onto a busy city street. Why didnât I give him a business card with my number, or be taken on a different route from the one I had set out on. I didnât even tell him my name, I thought. How bizarre. I wonder if I will meet him again. Or not. How unexpected and serendipitous our paths were to meet that day.
And even more bizarrely that day followed with a string of 'unluckyâ events for me. I felt elated but scattered. Was it the universeâs way of balancing? or was I gripping too tightly to the past and forgetting to be present? I was helter skelter. I had dropped my ipod on the bus, I came off my motorbike in first gear and almost went over the handlebars trying to fix (while riding) the mirror which was damaged in the first fall. And furthermore, I had unceremoniously shoveled not one but three ice-creams into my face later that day, drank beer, drank wine, all in a weirdly loose sense of seeking reality and control, and controlled unreality. Laughing all the while in the face of this âunluckyâ chaos, with a sense of acceptance, with a sense of the bigger picture. This material unreality couldnât get me downâŠbut it sure was strange.
Fast forward to the next day as I write this reflection and it is clear that I want and need closure. To feel the ecstatic openness of universal connection but to let it go again, to be present in the now of now with still mind and open heart. I leave this blog to return once again, to my yoga mat, for a kundalini yoga kriya to awaken the ten bodies. For if I understand and am aware of my energy bodies, to know what is my field, to acknowledge the pranic threads currently connecting me to this stranger, then this seems a god start.
