The Inconvenient Beauty

The Inconvenient Beauty - Myanmar

November 22, 2011

9-21-2011 – Train from Mandalay to Yangon

The Inconvenient Beauty

At the Shweddagon Pagoda complex

As the endless green pastures float by my window with streaks of rain plummeting towards them, I'm called to sum up the Myanmar experience.......for “I'm leeeeaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again” right after the train delivers me to Yangon.

As I look at the calendar, I realize that only 2.5 weeks have passed here. And that felt like a self-contained lifetime. The most saturated and stressful weeks of my journey thus far [and, I hope, for good]. Being here felt like eating an ambrosia cobbler mixed with sand-paper. A culinary delight bound to make your eyes water. The golden hearts of Burmese people are the sweet part.

And the rough part – the military that gives a perpetual impression of being watched and ready to pounce upon any line-crossing....The contrast of the thousands of golden Buddhist pagodas and what they stand for......and the hard dictatoriat of the country that one encounters much as a foreigner is a bit overwhelming. It constantly forced me to keep focusing on the sweet part of the onion.

Another thing I didn't think I'd say.....I'm much looking forward to being “back to the future.” Myanmar is definitely back in time. Far back. There is unadulterated beauty and innocence about that. And there is the flip side of nearly EVERYTHING taking much time and being done in weaving backwards ways....so, besides the bundles of newly-printed dollars I'd suggest bringing to any traveler, I'd pack up an even bigger bundle of patience. Surrender any hopes of connecting to the outside world in any funcitional manner [like anything that goes through the internet]. EVERYTHING here is an adventure – I have never encountered such degree of non-linearity on such a mass scale! Do not expect straight answers – it's not in the culture. The things that tend to be oh so simple outside of Myanmar [like booking tickets, getting $$ from an ATM, exchanging currency, getting a lift on a motor-bike or some directions or getting into or out of the country] turn into unexpected and sometimes lengthy adventures inside. Convenience is just not a priority or even a recognized concept here. It made me realize just how much I like effortless ways – and that sometimes I quite appreciate linearity in the places that count. It was the first time those support structures were point-blank absent in my experience. I got that I want some linearity in my life.

One of my beloved patterns within chaos: Lorentz attractor

Though, sometimes, the unexpected kindness almost balances that out – like the Indian Consulate opening the embassy just to accept my visa application on a holiday [!!!] because the owner of the hotel I stayed at was his dear friend.....and giving me a visa early because I was seriously running out of crisp dollars [and once again, I felt embraced by India – even outside of India!]. Or like meeting two lovely German meditators [they were there on an 8 month “meditation visa” - can you believe there is such a thing?] who rescued me from that situation just trusting my word [because services like PayPal consider Myanmar a “sanctioned country” and won't work here]. Or a woman in a roadside stall who gave me ice and camphor to sniff when I overheated.The things that work in this country seem to work because of the human connection – not because of any infrastructure. It made me wonder if the Junta has actually inadvertently brought people together – to look out for each other since there is no larger system that will do that, and how fine is the line between the human network support system and support from a larger infra-structure. Maybe, in the West we've tipped to the other side. Maybe dancing on the razor-thin edge between linearity and chaos is just a part of the human existence...