Pathfinding

I'm not always sure whether this blog is more an open journal (as the subheading once proclaimed), a manifesto, a travelogue, a sort of ethnographic cookbook, or a resource for seekers of holistic health.  It's safe to say that, like Daniel Dravit in The Man Who Would Be King, Ill Wind has been "most things in [its] time."  Today I'll venture into the swampy terrain of self-disclosure and make a declaration, a sort of "contrack" between myself and myself, witnessed by you-out-there.  To wit:

I hereby declare to remove myself, after a third and surpassingly glorious and chaotic romp through the subcontinent to be chronicled in due course, to Portland, OR, city of bridges and natural health mavens and Ursula K. LeGuin, to immerse myself mind body and spirit in the philosophy, art, science, creed, and praxis of Classical Chinese Medicine.  That deep-rooted stuff.  That heterogeneous, contested, obscure, decidedly living body of traditions about the body.

It's official--I've sent in my deposit and I'm crazy excited to make a four-year run of it at National College of Natural Medicine.  This both is and is not a change of track for me.  Is, because I've spent so much time and energy on Southasia and its languages (Nepali, Newari, now Hindi) and medical traditions.  Isn't, because, like Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, in its classical, non Mao-censored glory, has the potential to integrate immanent spirituality and transcendent health.  And unlike for Ayurveda, there is both solid legal basis for practicing Chinese medicine in the States and a deep bank of resources (other practitioners and teachers) to tap into.  So as of January '11, I'm going to shift gears and dive into East Asia.  I'll be starting from scratch in some ways, and what I do already know may get in the way at times, but I have faith that I will not only become adept as an acupuncturist and herbalist in the Chinese tradition but also be able to integrate my Ayurvedic understandings and eventually become a stronger practitioner because of my eclectic background.

Not that it's all so cut and dry as this last statement may make it sound.  In fact, I suspect that this departure will end up being not so much a destination in itself but a substantial length of road to wherever it is I'm going.  Odd as it may sound heading into an intensive four-year program,  I see an intimacy with the Chinese traditional arts as a pre-requisite to something else--even if I don't know what that something is yet.  For I can't help but entertain notions of integration, in the most ambitious and inclusive sense, extending in this case to integration medico-spiritual understanding and techniques from different traditions into one eventual Path.  I'm highly aware of my tendency to think too much (why else would I do so much rambling?), but I think a lot these days about what that ultimate Path will be.  What vehicle I will wind up in for the better part of my journey in this life.  And I have inklings.  Unwise to articulate them too soon, perhaps, but I have inklings that this yog, this union, will occur in the historical meeting ground between India and China, in Tibetan soil.  I'm not sure about this, and even if I were, I don't think there's any shortcut there.  If I'm headed to the mythical Mt. Kailash, abode of Shiva, I must approach it as the pilgrims do, by making a kora.  Perumbulating.  Completing my part of the mandala, so that when I reach the destination I am prepared, i.e. equipped with the appropriate knowledge and experience.  For now, my path leads through China, if not actual China (and I am bone-scared of modern China), then a representative cultural distillation thereof.  Wish this foolish pilgrim luck.

Even as I write this, I'm conscious that it may be the most presumptive and pretentious thing I've spouted in quite some time.  In these few paragraphs are embedded some of deepest visions, faith, and (surely) pride.  But today I feel like letting all that hang out there flapping in the ether, if for no other reason that I'll have something to look back at in, say, ten years time, and be able to judge whether I was more full of pretension or prescience.

Official Disclaimer

Due to a juicy new tidbit of U.S. policy, I have been prompted to make the following clarification with regard to the nature of this weblog:

*that contrary to all appearances, Ill Wind is not a U.S. Department of State or Fulbright Program website.

*that any similarity in content between the views expressed here and official U.S. Government foreign policy is purely coincidental.

*that all views expressed here are my own, except where attributed to others or vaguely plagiarized from the cybermind stream of consciousness to which I may be susceptible.

I hope this clears up any confusion that may have been plaguing the hearts and minds of my readers.

image: rice harvest outside Panauti, Kavrepalanchowk, Nepal

the greetings and solicitations shouted your way whenever you (tall, white) venture out of the city:

"hallo!"
"whatisyour name?"
"hello how are you!"
"take one photo please"
"yes give me please one sweet"

* * *

Fall comes to the Nepalese middle hills as a chill in the air at night, days now pleasantly warm and sunny. Cherimoyas are done and suntala (tangerines? mandarins?) are starting to blush gold. Time to eat black dal (heavy and warming) and to sun-dry hot peppers, strips of daikon radish, and the fermented greens called gundruk against the coming chill. A proverb refers to the "min pachas," 50 days and nights when even the fish are frozen in place in this land's swift-flowing rivers.
I think of New England fall days, tumbling towards solstice more dramatically than they do here. Walking with a Nepali friend to Namobuddha, a really extremely old stupa a day's walk from the Valley, I tried the capture the feeling of our Northeastern autumn: the colors, I said, and the slant of the light... you, reading this at a northerly latitude, understand.
But how to evoke to you the feel of the rice harvest in the villages? The terraces, meticulously laced one-by-one with emerald shoots back in June when the monsoons provided the necessary ankle-deep mud--the paddy in the terraces is now ripened to golden brown. The plants have been tied into bunches (with other rice stalks for ties) for weeks, and after cutting and threshing with a foot-powered spinning device the empty bunches of straw are left in place to dry (see photo). The rice, still in husk, is spread out on pieces of plastic or cloth tarps, combed through, fanned with circular woven bamboo trays called nanglo to blow away bits of foreign matter. One man or woman hurling nanglos full of spiraling, shining rice onto the tarp, two or three fanning with their own nanglos, thrrrepp-swoosh-swoosh, a steady rhythm. Every step of this work is accomplished with whole families working together, long days in the sunny fields as slowly the gold stalks give way to bare brown, the stubble and the hut-like straw piles the only signs left of the months of labor. Hard to conceive of the amount of sweat that went into every luxuriant spread of husked rice, like the queen-sized mattress-sized amount that the old woman is combing through with her bare feet, taking her time as she pores through the fruits of her labor.

Kinds of rice. There's mansuri and its various subtypes for everyday eating, fat-grained tai cin (preferred for chiura, beaten rice, and chang, milky rice beer) but an unreliable producer, prone to pests and disease), prized pokhreli and jira masino ("fine cumin-seed"). Some seed is heirloom, some new-fangled hybrid that yields higher or is more resistant to disease but that, surely, takes its toll even on the rich lakebed clay soil of the Kathmandu Valley. I don't know if genetically-engineered rice has made its way here yet, with its double-talk promises and price to match. Most farmers probably couldn't afford the initial outlay, and I hope they would refrain from taking loans and risking their lands to do so (though many here, Newars of the Jyapu caste, are tenants working others' fields and receiving 50% of the harvest). It's a topic for another entry, better yet a more politically and economically-astute writer--but the trend away from subsistence and towards commodity agriculture looks to me like a dangerous one. I'm highly suspicious of the global free market...but better quit while I'm ahead on this subject. The argument for primeval or pictureque poverty isn't a pretty one either. But--one last protest--before TV arrived here, no one complained that their lifestyle wasn't up to the Western 'standard of living.'
Now that I've put my foot in it--comments welcome.