Inner Mongolia: the Beauty in Desolation

I am writing from Beijing tonight, sitting in the small courtyard of my hotel, the Cote Cour, watching the fish in the coy pond in front of me, lazily sipping green tea. The hotel is located in one of the city's hutongs, or traditional courtyard residences in the midst of a network of tiny alleys. My current temporary abode is quite the contrast to the space I inhabited just a few days ago.

This year, for the mid-autumn festival, I decided to follow my Beijing yoga teacher to Inner Mongolia for five days of practice, surrounded by a vast, windy landscape.

The wind outside our hotel, the Shangdu Lake Original Ecological Tourism Ranch.

To reach Inner Mongolia, I flew into Beijing, on a flight that was delayed by many hours, thus I arrived at 2:30 am, spent a couple of hours at Zhao's apartment, and boarded a van to drive six more hours to our yoga residence. The further outside Beijing that we drove, the more blue the sky, and the more desolate our surroundings became.

Pulling up to our ranch, the landscape looked like this:

When I first began posting photos on social media, my friend, Andy, saw where I was and asked if I had ever read Haruki Murakami's The Wind Up Bird Chronicles. I wrinkled my nose and responded, "I find Murakami writes riddles I just don't understand." But Andy persisted and told me more about the book, intriguing me enough to download a copy. I would soon find myself utterly involved with the characters in the book, and the way Murakami wrote of Mongolia.

In the first days of the yoga retreat, I found myself unsettled. Parts of the hotel were quite industrial, with exposed cement ceilings and cold floors. I felt like I was in a scene from The Shining. And I disliked it. I hate scary movies. And now, it seemed, I had traveled far and paid well to be part of one. Additionally, as I gazed out the window at the space beyond, there was nothing for the eye to grip onto.

Murakami got this.

"Sometimes, when one is moving silently through such an utterly desolate landspace, an overwhelming hallucination can make one feel that oneself, as an individual human being, is slowly coming unraveled. The surrounding space is so vast that is becomes increasingly difficult to keep a balanced grip on one's being."

The Wind Up Bird Chronicles, Haruki Murakami

The unsettled feelings that I had began to have physical manifestations. As soon as I had arrived at the hotel, I began having trouble sleeping, waking in the morning drenched in sweat, as I had finally fallen asleep at some midnight hour with a light on because I was too afraid to sleep in the dark. I mean, what the f? I live alone, I often travel alone, and yet I was spooked by this place.

I was determined, though, to get beyond the grand discomfort of it all. I did not want to simply wish my time away in Inner Mongolia, and miss the lessons the land had to offer. And so, I set to exploring further.

By day, I began to find beauty in the desolation.
Pictured here are my new friend Guy and I taking a slow run after lunch.

These tart berries were fun to pop in my mouth.

Here, it does feel like Nature's funeral. But then, there was more to it ...

The wind went howling through brittle branches. Leeeetttt goooooo, it seemed to bay. Chilled, I continued to listen. S u r r r e n d e e e r r r, it beseeched me.

slowly

slowly

slowly

I felt an opening ... into the vastness, into my yoga asanas, into myself.

And I continued to read.

"The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go to the bottom. When there no flow, stay still."

Wind Up Bird Chronicles, Haruki Murakami

Okay. Okeeeey, Murakami, I thought. I hear you. Or I think I hear you, because I think I get you, at least a little bit, but you still have do write these Murakamisms that are like wtf are you even saying, tho? But, yes, I'll flow or go high or low or whatever this landscape is asking of me.

And it did become true, that through the hours, I felt it -- the wonder, the awe that comes, paradoxically, with land so beautifully desolate.

On our last full day, after many hours of yoga practice, my body was saying get out and run. So I did.

As I made my way around the lake, I saw camels, which I did originally called llamas in a text to Mom and Dad because my brain is still in South America sometimes.

I also saw the following, which could be a scene right out of Wind Up Bird, which was cool. And unnerving. For real, Murakami, you're going to manifest in my reality? C'mon, though, man. Save me the chills, pleeaaaaase.

There's one thing to do to feel rooted after taking in such strange sights: An Inversion in the Wild.

On this last full day, on this long run, I began to regret that the trip was coming to an end. I supposed I had noted before, but I was here noting again, perhaps in a new way that if we are open to surrendering ourselves to our present reality, there is this capacity for incredible adaptation. While one day the wind and vast landscape felt unsettling to me, after some time, both became elements of my environment that I felt I could sit with for eternity.

The next day, on our final morning in Inner Mongolia, after a strong yoga practice, I stretched out onto the deck over the water.

I thought of my book, once again, for the final time on this trip.

"The sun would rise from the eastern horizon, cut its way across the empty sky, and sink below the western horizon. This was the only perceptible change in our surroundings. And in the movement of the sun, I felt something I hardly know how to name: some huge, cosmic love."

The Wind Up Bird Chronicles, Haruki Murakami

Lying under a bright sun that was settled into a blanket of blue, I felt ... the incredible lightness of being, and I thought, poetry, it seems, is something I'm destined to find everywhere.

Tonight, as my green tea has turned to a glass of red wine, I'm toasting Namaste to the divine souls that I met on this trip.

I very much thought someone said, "1, 2, 3, JUMP!" And yes, our trip included humans, two dogs, and a Brazilian bird. Obviously.

Writing from Day 8 of Quarantine: A Toast to Paradox

After over a week of isolation, I now know something about what an animal in a zoo feels like. Sort of. In the sense that I’ve been taken out of my natural habitat. This is interesting, though, because as an introvert I would have argued my home is certainly my natural habitat. But 8 days into this solitude ... I’m over this shit.

Or at least the nearly absolute solitude of it. Other parts of this experience, like the ways that my community is continuing to reach me, just tickles my heart and soul. Since arriving back home on Friday night, I have been the recipient of a number of beautiful deliveries: a supply of dark chocolate, a bouquet of cat-safe flowers, two lunches of rooftop garden veggies, and ice and limes for my gin and tonics. I am ready to just be able to really give back now, and I know that the coming weeks will offer plenty of opportunities to pay it forward.

It seems that the new regulation now is that anyone returning from a country deemed a danger for importing the virus will have to do the full quarantine in a hotel room. The exception may be those with children. Hearing this news today made me ever-grateful that I returned from Thailand when I did.

I, like you, continue to work to establish a new normal and a new routine. I have let go of the notion that this time of quarantine and working from home is going to be my most productive time ever. I have learned that the mathematical equation that sums up my days is not time+energy=output; rather my days equate to time+space (minus) a-great-deal-of energy=grace to just be.

My days have still started with movement, but not long, high-intensity workouts. I hit my mat for 30-45 minutes of yoga, or a short weight workout. I thank myself for showing up.

My balcony has really become something of a haven. I move here, but I also eat here, sit and watch the world here, write here. Why haven't I been doing this all along?

During the afternoon, I connect with my students via Zoom.

Seniors who have just found out that their IB exams will be canceled.

I also use Zoom for my mid-day breaks; I meet my friends there for good laughs. I do wonder ... I wonder if Zoom and Tik Tok are in cahoots here ... just a conspiracy theory. The Tik Tok videos that come into my chats throughout my day give me so much life. In the midst of chaos, we are finding our creative outlets.

My nights are spent listening to 90s hip hop, laying on my yoga mat on the balcony, trying to get my cats to engage in photo shoots. Now, this is the real stuff of cat lady memoirs. Save me soon, please.

Being quite confined these past days has allowed me to sit in a place of awareness and this awareness has been a sensory experience. As I sit on my balcony in the morning, afternoon, and evening, I feel my senses awaken in deep ways. The sounds of the city, colors of the trees below, and textures of the yoga mat I am seated on all become palpable to me.

Indeed, there are parts of my day that I love. Watching the sun rise higher in the sky as I lay leisurely in bed in the morning and watching the sun set while I eat dinner each evening are new parts of my routine that offer a certain excitement to each day; I love enjoying the simplicity and beauty of these moments.

As in any temporal context, there are other parts of the day that are so tedious, predominantly the way I just feel so dang tired right now, the past weeks of uncertainty and ambiguity seemingly having compounded in my body. So it is that I, paradoxically, feel both exhausted and entirely alive simultaneously.

This evening I was reading from Adreanna Limbach's Tea and Cake with Demons: A Buddhist's Guide to Feeling Worthy. Chapter four begins with Tolstoy's words from Anna Karenina: "All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow." As Limbach recounts the story of the Buddha, she writes, "His origins are also a demon story, as most stories of transformation and triumph are, highlighting how we are made in the perpetual alchemy of falling apart and coming together." These words struck deep into me, for my own experience in the past year and a half; it also feels these words just ring so true for the Collective right now.

As individuals, as families, as communities, we are both falling apart and coming together on the path of novel and scary terrain. I talk to my best friend Jenn to hear about how her clinic does not have enough masks for doctors and patients, feeling like our healthcare system is ripping at the seams, to then hear and see the dozens of people I know who are making masks from fabrics and original patterns. I talk to my family and hear a certain anxiety in their messages when they consider the prospect of weeks of social distancing, to hear about them also opening up to new technology for virtual happy hours. I have felt separated from students who hit a hard place in the face of distance learning, to feel them return after so many of us have reached out with words and video conversations to embrace them in their confusion.

Sitting in an uncertain space with so many of my friends and family really beginning to process a new reality, I consider the power of how we frame that reality. As I was (again) scrolling Instagram today, I came across a post from Dr. Alexandra H Solomon. Rather than call keeping ourselves away from others "social-distancing" she coined it "cocooning." If we all enter our cocoons, we come out more beautiful than before. As with the Buddha, our transformation will happen after living in some dark spaces. After the dusk of each day is the dawn of a new morning.

To darkness, and to light.

Sending all my love,

Jame

Writing from Phuket, this Side of Paradise

I feel like I have lived a lifetime since I last wrote an update in the Life and Times of the Coronavirus. Some days, it has felt that an entire Universe has existed inside of that one day. Two weeks and three days ago, I left Shenzhen for Phuket, Thailand. I was hesitant to leave at first, actually. I had settled into such a routine in Shenzhen, and I felt safe and secure in this routine; changing locales felt a bit riskier, at least that was my perception. Originally, for spring break, I was supposed to go to Taiwan for a yoga retreat. When Covid-19 hit, Taiwan closed their borders to China, so Plan A was foiled. I was disappointed, but I decided I would make my own personal yoga retreat in Shenzhen, until I came out a discussion with my therapist having decided to take a chance on a retreat in Thailand, one of the last countries to keep their borders open.

As I reflect on this decision, it feels like the Universe had conspired to make it so from the beginning. The past two weeks have offered space for my heart to open and expand and sigh into beautiful spaces. Before I left Shenzhen, I was worried that I would lose my writer’s flow, and while writing has not been a priority in Phuket, being in a flow state sure has persisted.

The first days in Phuket were spent on the beach. The woman in this photo did not yet know the trajectory of the trip. I have extended my stay twice so far, finding just what I have needed here in Thailand.

My days have been spent practicing yoga in the morning and evening, and in between, spending time with some of the best souls and living in the moments. If you find yourself seeking a place of solace in Southeast Asia, I must highly recommend CC’s Hideaway. The curry is delicious, the smoothies are divine, the yoga is transcendent, and the staff is so, so warm.

For me, what has also been extraordinary about this time is that my anxiety has been kept in check. For anyone, a time of such uncertainty can cause a great deal of stress and anxiety, and understandably so. Somehow, I have leaned into the uncertainty, and it feels that my spirit has used the life I am living at a slower pace to level up. I have seen and felt a great deal of fear around me, and yet I have continued to maintain a state of wellness for myself.

Thailand has been liberating. And that liberation, and the centered feeling I continue to be in touch with, looks a bit like this ...

Slow afternoons have sometimes given way to nights of dancing, followed by swimming in the middle of the night under the light of a full moon.

These folks are such good energy. Looking at this photo, I consider how special it is when you cross paths with the right people at the right time.

I watched a shooting star streak across a corner of the sky as I turned my attention away from the moon for a moment during our moonlit swim. It seems that some of the world has gone daft with the current viral state of affairs; my world, though, floats in a sea of just right moments. I have deep gratitude for what this time and space is allowing me to explore.

This morning, I am preparing for the first yoga practice of the day, and then I will get online to connect with my students. Teaching from Thailand is a bit harder than teaching from Shenzhen, but I will not complain about teaching from paradise. I have been meditating on words that I heard from my first yoga instructor here: More open heart, More happy life.

One of my favorite poets, Rumi, once wrote,

“There’s a morning when presence comes

over your soul. You sing like a rooster

in your earth-colored shape. Your heart

hears and, no longer frantic, begins

to dance.”

Wherever you are, I hope that you find space for deep movement, for peace, and for presence.

Sending lots of love from Thailand,

Jame