Awaiting Awakening

So...after a long hiatus, I am reopening this blog to try and put to record some intervening travels. Since my last post (pre-Pandemic), it's been in my thoughts whilst life's numerous episodes joyous and otherwise intrude. Yes, familial health trials & crisis has made up for some of the delay but mostly, I've found alternate distractions to navigate the days resulting in successive postponements. Even more causal is the ease and efficiency of instagram uploads ...they have relegated my blog writings to an outdated medium. 

We have not stopped our travels. Ofcourse the 2020 world pandemic totally derailed what was supposed to have been our return to China and South Asia in January 2020. I suppose one the reasons I've come to revisiting the blog is the anticipation of our planned trip next February 2025. This would represent a 14 year gap from our earlier trip. It is time ..& we have much to catch up on re the Middle Kingdom.


Pre-occupation with the latest geo-political turmoil has been one of my distractions after retirement. When one finally has no excuses coupled by a new found curiosity about the globe we inhabit. For me, the dawning came slowly and gradually as I engaged in some independent sources of news mediums( books, documentaries, podcasts, youtube, Twitter/X, TICTOK..etc) to gain insight. Steadily, I realized the veil of lies I've actually been brought along through decades of blissful ignorance. Realizing a bit at first during T's first presidency run only to find out to my utter amazement that my newly learnt reality was only scratching the surface. In fact, my initial indignation back in 2016 has been entirely turned on its head by successive revelations over this decade. Suffice it to say the silver lining of having had such a loathsome character as T has been the deconstruction of a well orchestrated facade. The effect of his ascendance has been to ripoff the mask of the opposing side exposing the utter HYPOCRISY, the entrenched ruse enacted upon its citizenry, which remarkably supersedes the brashness, vulgarity and naked decreptitude of the other.

So what would your prefer, one is made to ask? To be confronted with the choice that you either live with & accept governance by an individual full of bluff & bluster, in your face style to celebrate raw baser human instincts as the way of the world; our existence is not to aspire but to survive OR to be perpetually hoodwinked and gaslighted into unspeakable hypocrisy that makes our existence a kind of Kabuki theatre of the absurd? 

Feelings of defeat, dejected anguish as we continue to witness the most depraved genocide of modern history. Do I comfort myself with the lens of new spiritualism and enlightened gurus who espouse with confidence that our consciousness once beyond this dense planet of third dimension is one of no judgment? ...in fact all is well and perfect? The multiverse is vast and infinite. What we are witnessing is just a transient blip. Quantum physics appears to be catching up to recognize the possibility of this complex web of consciousness and light energy transcending time, dimension and our little universe. Do I then subscribe to their belief that suffering has its own purpose in the grand scheme of things...things our confined small brain cannot possibly comprehend? Thus to react strongly, driven by our duality, innate sense of injustice and humane feelings of distress for the victims are in fact unnecessary and unwarranted? This level of passion needs to be tamed and tampered down to detachment. Yet, what is that age old adage ? "ALL that evil needs to thrive is for good men to do nothing ?" Then again, this idea is put forth in the context of our lowly dimension afterall.

Evoke detachment, acceptance... what a comforting thought when I could no more mentally sustain their torment. Bereft yet immobilized by distance and circumstance… scrolling online genocidal horrors. What I lack in rebel initiative is aided by a natural pragmatism. Can my marginal impact really help to change what we now face? I can only applaud the young students & active groups resisting the state agenda along the sidelines, giving $$ and likes and hopeful encouragement. Need to affect more... but what mockery I tell myself to think that I could emit real change in this geopolitical sphere all the while admonishing self that if one is to truly practice higher spiritualism one needs to lose ones ego, accept tiniest impact since one little ripple is what starts it off. Wonder when and how I am ever to square this dichotomy. 

In any event, I've digressed ...here to be posted should be our latest trips to doc the passage of our golden years. 

Iceland

















Italy, Greece & Istanbul

















South Pacific with Paul Gauguin 







Hawaii