Dedicated to Amina, and those of other strangers’ kindness in my travels, that read the situations with such clarity and saved me from, rape or death or pain, just because they see and help, because they feel the world we live in… Thank you!

Life streams through our conscious sieve, memories and interpretation retained in moments to form our views.
My sieve has always been a great beauty to me, often I believe I am the luckiest girl in the world for the way it disperses the odorous sludge that are the bad things that happen to us all, it fills mostly with the lightness of being and beauty.
But age, pain and the last couple of years have been so heavy, some oily blackness made its way through and settled itself upon the happiness, that ability to believe in limitless. Cynicism had climbed into my life and took a high seat.
Every now and again there are beacons who light the way a while, but few if ever have the ability to scoop the oil away and leave only the pristine movement of the ocean of contentedness that wells within.
Those holes in my sieve so tattered and torn, have been restored like new at the backpackers at the end of the world.
I can hardly remember how I met him, it was a time of such severe emotional upheaval. I do like cutting things fine, and filling as much time as possible with every experience I can, good or bad, but I had been my own worst enemy these 2 days trying to cover an impossible 2000+ miles on a whim. For a boat to Antarctica that wasn’t going to wait for me.
I had mixed up dates, as you do when you’re traveling because time seems meaningless within the big picture. Which is your own insignificance. In alien cultures and your massive attempts at grasping them, to become one with the foreign in its language and differences, inevitably, sometimes you will always just remain, passing through. I had left my pack where it had been locked up by the owner who only just returned in time for me to make my plane, after sleeping in the airport I couldn’t find a bus the last 600kms to Ushuaia from Punta Arenas, but at the last moment some tiny insignificant bus company had 3 seats left! I felt like I would make it, even with 2 flat  tyres and having to change bus. Somehow I had arrived at 10.30pm the night before my boat.
I had showered, my first in 3 days, and washed all my clothes and hung them out, a quick email to let everyone know I’d made it, that belly flops with penguins were closer than the horizon now.
At 12.45am the calm hit and I realized I hadn’t eaten for a day, the girls in my dorm suggested the Dublin an irish pub only 2 blocks away. Somehow while waiting for my pizza, I’d had a beer, and another, and this place, the Dublin with its ‘restaurant at the end of the universe’ feel, was pulsing with foreigners and locals in all languages and states of intoxication. I got talking to a fantastic array of people, shut up in the frozen smoking section and being befuddled by the strength of the red beer, at 12 it had become St Paddy’s Day and we were all starting early.
I finally ate, snuck another beer in and decided to stumble home to sleep, a very young brazillian followed me, and when I was entering my hostel he tried to get inside, ‘please tell him it’s a girls only hostel’ I asked the receptionist. He looked shocked, I can understand, the brazillian was really young and quite a hotty, and I’m not exactly spring chicken material myself, but the receptionist complied with my request, and politely turned the young man away. Tripping upstairs to my dorm, the walls played games with my head and lying down was torture, what do they put in their beer?
So I head downstairs for water, to talk to the lovely receptionist who had saved me from the brazillian.
His name was Juan and he was to become my muse.
It is a little muddled that first night, I know we sat up all night talking and looking things up on the internet, mostly science, the hadron collider, and a little about me, Before I left at dawn, he asked me to climb Martial Glacier with him when I returned. I slept a long peaceful sleep, before the last minute rush of getting ready for Antarctica.
The next 11 days were worlds away for me. I was surrounded by English speakers and learning and lectures and unlimited food, everything was easy and right there for me. When Antarctica reared her beauty she was all things I’d expected, marvelous, miraculous, majestic, mythical and ethereal. She never really lets you in, you always feel like an intruder on something pristine-armies of penguins and intricate snowflakes in giant conglomeration. It was the last boat of the year and we were a hardy lot, but we luckily crossed the drake at it’s bathtub best, we had perfect weather and arrived to our first landing early. I had no idea really how I was supposed to feel, so different from my insular solo way of traveling.
Because of engine trouble we were back a day early and 3 of us did the martial glacier, because it was Sunday and we were having trouble hiring a car for Harberton. I didn’t mind doing it again though, with the receptionist.
Alas it is the last night and all the Antarcticans are dispersing like snowflake flecks to settle in their own piece of the the world and I am yet again at the institution which is the Dublin. Somehow I am one of the last 3, and shy of the red beer, had 3 black Russians instead, still there is no difference in my state of intoxication, as I wander home and am startled by the smile of my receptionist. As I roll in drunk again, embarking on a conversation which will stretch out along, genes, medicine, ability, experiences, past times, interests and me just sitting in wonder at his extraordinary mind, this slow deliberate speech, this easy to understand, share and be honest with person. He is fascinating, no less because he chooses to speak in English, his third language and we still seem to ’get’ each other, even with my slang eccentricities.
We never stop talking or stop being intrigued by each other and everything flows. Every now and again he throws me with a question, forcing me to think outside my box, and it sends my mind racing and grasping at things which had slipped me by. My favourite was 2 days later when we were in Tierra Del Fuego National Park, he had asked, mid conversation,
‘how many people do you have that truly listen to you?’
I see it as the onion question that it is, and my mind is branching out to strip off the layers to answer. He is saying, just with that question, an incredibly strong statement that he is listening to me, has listened to me for days, has shared with me concepts, interests and passions. Yet he is asking and I answer as honestly as possible, ’that I don’t know, that I think people may take aspects of what I say into themselves, and if they identify they listen, I may mean something to them, if not, I will mean nothing.’ He just nods because there is so much more to say.
Who does truly listen? I think of domestic deafness in couples co-dependent that have been together so long they just assume each other, and the other will comply to keep peace, to ward off that dreaded intruder, change. Of friends who at times, especially on meeting and bonding, that you wow each other, but as years go by and dramas creep in and life itself deals heavy blows, that you can only really hear each other sometimes…yes Juan..I don’t guess I will ever really know who listens to me, I just know that you are listening now, with subtle, impressed interest and it has changed my whole world.
I love to listen, to observe, to be the confidante, ‘to have the ear of merchant to hear all and say nothing’ about anybody elses circumstances but my own quantum lifestyle. I’d love to teach, to inspire, but I can’t stand still long enough to be successful at either.
But the dark years are being scooped away in your presence. There is too much of you to even be condensed into words.
I sit up every night with you while the world sleeps and you work, until your voice and patience have softened me into tiredness, I have exhausted every long held view and passionate opinion, and just before the world wakes I crawl into my dorm, my mind alive with concept and thought and my dreams latch onto both.
The hours over the next 2 days when I am not with Juan I am writing, really writing for the first time in a long time, I should be out discovering the end of the world, in Harberton or Tolhuin or the National Park, but my mind is so full of Antarctica, the people from the boat, the overwhelming last 2 weeks that I forgive myself this quiet interlude of just taking it all in, and replaying bits in my mind, writing all the little ideas that poke through.
While I slept and wrote he worked a 16hr shift, but would join me when I made lunch or a coffee or had a cigarette break. He was leaving at 4pm so I hurried out of my writing revelry to say goodbye. He asks in his almost shy way if I would ‘like to go for a walk’ I had thought that all he’d want was sleep after such a long shift, but ‘yes’, yes yes I say. We follow along the beagle channel on the edge of the city, which is the end of the world, and we still talk.
He takes me to the Yamana Museum, there is only one full blood yamana left, she is 86 and has no children, the last of a great people, she lives across the channel, Puerto Williams, Isla Navarino, it truly is the end of her world.
I am shocked that the yamana are naked, it’s not like im not wearing 5 layers and the wind still has teeth. Juan casually says ‘they rubbed seal fat into their skin to insulate them’ like he can read my mind. We start talking about the evolution of inuit and asian eyes, I think it’s cos of the cold, but I am open to ideas. It leads us to the question of his eyes and the operation that will fix them, we start talking of stem cells and nanotechnology, I am bursting as we take our seats at Tante Sara, and we hoe in and eat heartily ah, Mexican food.
Hours have slipped by, and I know he starts again at midnight, so feeling full and tired we both go to our beds, but I no longer really sleep. So I am up reading when he comes in a little late, just before 1am, and this time we launch into literature and spoken word, I tell him about 42 being the answer to life the universe and everything, we laugh as we read through why it is, and xkcd, because I know he’ll appreciate it. I am crawling to bed at 4.30am again, he says we’ll go hiking tomorrow.
Lethargy is finally gripping me, I think it’s the cold and darkness. It is snowing when I wake at 9am, and no matter how long I lay there, I just can’t seem to sleep more than that. So I wander around the town, write Tess a postcard from Tierra del Fuego, because she has always wanted to come here. Catch up on downloading photos and a bit of computer stuff, and feel acutely the guilt of doing nothing, I am about to book my bus out of here, but when I turn up at reception, Juan is there, all bright eyed and bushy tailed. He has slept all day, is ready to eat ,  I am on my last legs with tiredness, but thrilled that he  wants to eat with me, the bus place is closed so we sit at the Darwin, my favourite restaurant, where a  guy from the hostel, who always wears royal blue, sings and works, he even gives us free beer. We munch away on rabas, calamari rings. He brings up that we are supposed to go hiking and I am thinking, well, it’s 5pm, but, hey why not?, and we wander back tipsy to pack our bags.
It’s the worst packing I’ve ever done, I’m surprised I even remembered the tent, and I am falling asleep on the couch when Juan returns. We head to the supermarket for supplies, probably the most ecclectic camping food ever. 2 bottles of beer, 1of Fernet, 1 water, 12 burgers and bread. I had realized as we walked to the supermarket how little of  Ushuaia I had seen, he points out the lenga forest 2 blocks up and the supermarket i had not known of or I would have cooked more. On the way back, now I’ve sobered up I remember all I’d forgotten and stuff it all in while Juan covers reception because Matteus wants a bath, after half hour, Juan jokes with me, a Turkish bath. It is so close to darkness that we give up the idea of hitching and actually decide to catch a cab the 20kms to the park.
I am all flabbergasted because the park office won’t accept my concession card, when all of the parks in Chile did, no wonder the tourists in this part of town get a bit disheartened, it is $20 for me to enter and only $3 for Juan,  but the taxi takes us all the way to the campsite. There is just enough last light to gather what is left of firewood, it is Autumn now, during the summer the park sees up to 6000 visitors per day, so its slim pickings for firewood, but there are a couple of twisted trees that want to come for the ride, and Juan liberates them.
We set up the tent and blow up our mattresses, he’s got one of those choice self pumping comfy singles, like I use at home, but it takes a while to blow up, I start the fire while he’s setting up and I thank the world for it, ah the mesmerizing flame. We have beer which makes the work even easier and the lake fades in the darkness and our lenga forest, dressed in its russet autumn colours fades to black around us. Once he takes over, the fire is much better, and we are drinking and talking so much, about stars and navigation, and he tells me the story of the maps found in turkey that prove they must have been flying or at least aware of  height from the early ages, I agree, with the navigational instruments that the Arab/Persians invented (including the sextant) it is sure they knew the world was round long before Columbus, they already had the concept of lattitude and longitude in the time of marco polo, which, by the way, Juan had an application on his phone to look up instantly the birthdates of all great explorers, leaders and prophets, so in 1264 I agree, there were already those who knew.  I tell him how the Polynesians inhabited the pacific with sticks joined together and shells to mark out the star configurations, it looks like a childs’ artwork, but those maps were accurate in every way as they canoed across the pacific to inhabit the islands under the watchful eye of Tengaroa, their god.
So we end up on religion and theology, that, along with those most fantastic hamburgers sees us through until 4am, it is an amazing night.  I tend to think of myself as quite the Neanderthal, hardy and outdoorish, with very slight needs, whatever I have is usually enough  and I always get by. But Juan yet again amazes me, spreading the coals to cook our burgers and then instantly restarting the fire with our limited wood supply. I am absolutely gob smacked when he asks me for a can opener and I say , ‘yes, but back at the hostel’ and produces a tin of pate which he rubs against the rock around the fire, and the can opens perfectly, I am dumbstruck as we eat our pate on bread, will there always be so much more to learn? I feel like my head will explode with all he is teaching me, all this new information.
He tells me how when tierra del fuego was originally discovered, it was named the land of smoke, from the yamana settlements. But the king had said, ’where there is smoke, there’s fire’ and the name was changed to the land of fire.
We have gone from lao Tzu to Taoism to Buddhists to sadu’s and shi’ite nd sunni muslims, with drops of bahai and polytheism and animism approaches mixed in, it’s the usual recipe for long conversations, but for us it is just one of many.
Fernet, I don’t know how to explain this drink, it tastes like everything, but mostly like Becherovka, a herby, spicy drink from Czech Republic, I tell him it’s my resolutions drink, when I’m hoping for impossible things. I drink it with friends to make wishes on changes to life, to embrace a new mindset, or a new abyss to jump into. Fernet is now the same with me, I have definitely started swimming in a new abyss in Juans company.
It leads us into talking about friends, about camping and fishing and just enjoying nature, and though this is probably amongst the coldest nights ever camping, (-3c) Juan says we have ‘central heating’ with our Fernet.
I have been awake so long now, I’m so tired that at 4.30am we climb into the tent  and spend a good hour shivering, he pulls me up onto his comfy mattress, asks if it’s ok if he keeps me warm, and wraps his arms around me with no intent of anything except making it possible for me to sleep, he asks me if it’s ok, and after the flirtatious, pushy, guilt tripping sailors aboard Ushuaia, it is like heaven to be wrapped in someones arms who genuinely just cares about my wellbeing.
As I feel asleep in his arms, that was the moment when he washed away all of my cynicism and I yet again felt the innocence of youth and trust, the spectacular opening of being free from my sadness, where I could believe in people again, and all that is good in the world, and feel worthwhile but still be apart of everything around, it’s like falling in love, but with the world.
We slept until 12, and it was raining when we woke., so I was stoked to find my cheapy tent was waterproof, it had always been dry when I camped in the north. But I didn’t want to get up, Juan coaxed me into hiking, and we sadly found our bread stolen, naughty wild animals! We headed out along the lake shore to the beautiful Lago Roca and further, around the driftwood and pebble beach with the mini waves beating the shore and the white capped peaks rising around us out of the red, orange, yellows and greens of the twisted, gnarled  forest. When we arrive at the start of the Cerro Gaunaco track, it has a big sign saying ‘Don’t start this trail after 12 noon, you need good equipment and physical condition”, it’s 2pm, we haven’t eaten anything but we have a go anyway. At first it is not so steep and there was a bed of waxy fern that I have never seen before, but the extremes of the end of the world have bred some crazy endemic species, so it is not strange to be awed by the differences.  Then it gets steep, and my last fortnight of heavy drinking, smoking cigarettes, inactivity and over eating slap me hard around the head, I will have to start all over again to get fit, because i obviously left it on the boat. I guess to that i have a cold and am pretty run down, but I didn’t notice until I started climbing.  Juan is like a mountain goat, easily eating up the steep and slippery trail, but I have to stop often and he waits for me. I am feeling altogether pretty useless, but he doesn’t seem to mind, I am angry with myself as I always am when I don’t think I’ll accomplish something im attempting, but it’s also nice to forgive yourself sometimes. I know I’ll keep going til there’s nothing left, slowly but surely the tortoise will win the race.
Amidst my internal war with myself and thinking Juan must think I am absolutely full of shit about all the hiking I’ve done, it was beautiful. Winding steeply up through the forest, the sound of birds and water as we pass close by or cross the creeks formed by the glacier run off and melting snow, with strange lumpy trees, and collections of puffy soft fungi. After 2 hours we reach a sublime lookout, all of the islands lakes, peaks and forest lie below us, and some enterprising soul has carved a ‘fin del mundo‘ sign and wedged it in a tree. We take all the tourist pictures, and though we can see the peak, it’s still a distance, and it’s snowing, I tell him I’m happy with how far we’ve come and he agrees, I say I feel like I’m at the top anyway. And I am.
Even while we climbed, after 4 days of talking nonstop I felt comfort in the silence of that walk with him. Though I could sometimes just overhear his beautiful voice singing Ray Charles songs. It’s kind of strange too, because I find it difficult to walk with many people, only 4 have I ever felt this comfortable with, Kez, Ty, Josh and Shane. We head down and I do much better at that, only slipping once, and he lets me go in front at my own pace. The shop is open on our return, and we happily share the last ham cheese roll and a packet of crisps. It’s just after 5pm and he suggests the easy walk to la Pataiea, the opening of the park to the ocean, I’m keen.
I think it’s only 4 kms and relatively flat, but the map is pretty bad and we get quite lost, even with directions from the interpretive centre, 3 times actually, so I should’ve taken that as an omen. The wind is sheets of teeth through the open expanse of  the moors and he gives me his jumper to keep me warm and block its violent gusts. We cross bridges and find a track which is absolutely stunning, we are in the cormorant archipeligo, and the track is waist high grasses trodden down, so it’s airiness is like walking on clouds, there are birds and bunnies everywhere, and the rolling isles block the wind as we meander around up and through. I know when I ask to stop and smoke on the cushions of moss that we won’t make it back for the last bus, and I’m hoping Juan is okay with that, he seems to be.
We somehow end up in a loop back at the police headquarters, and decide no more shortcuts, we’ll just take the road. It’s only 4 kms, but I am fading quickly and though we pass some really beautiful different colored lakes, with only a kilometre or so to go, I say to Juan that I only have another kilometre left in me, that i  should’ve taken my medicine before we left the tent. He looks at me with those eyes, when someone can see right through you and says we are hitching back immediately.
’Are you in much pain?’ he asks
‘yes’ I say, ‘but I can take it’.
An old 2 seater 4wd with a ranger at the wheel appears at that moment round the bend to pick us up, it is the first conversation in Spanish I’ve had in days, and it sounds funny to me, the rapidity with which Juan speaks his own language as opposed to the calm deliberate English he speaks with me. There is so much more inflection in his voice and the ranger tells us about how many people pass through in the summer and how few there are now., but I am in a lot of pain and it dulls my concentration to apply Spanish, she drops us at her hut, and a fisherman we met earlier takes us the last couple of km’s to the camping. It is again near dark, and I am quite useless at gathering wood, Juan leaves to do the hard work while I pop painkillers and medicine. I have eaten so little that my body takes it up immediately and I try to help, but he asks me to rest, and he starts the impossible fire with wet, wet wood and I am again awed by him. I am quiet tonight, it is dawning on me how unwell I am because I am exhausted, we have 6 hamburger patties left and as they cook up they drop oil into the fire and help it burn, I must say they are the best thing I have ever tasted!
It starts raining again and it’s only 10pm, but I need sleep to heal, so we go to bed, I have my head on his chest and I feel his heartbeat, all strong and regular. ’
‘This is nice’, he says.
I say ’definitely’.
He says ’you scared me today’, and I say ’ I didn’t mean to’.
I fell asleep using his arm as a pillow and he has his other wrapped around me, and I am not cold, not even for one second this whole night, I sleep soundly for 8 hours, and think he must have the deadest arm with me laying on it and I’ve forced him into the corner of the tent and the rain is permeating his sleeping bag, he must’ve been so uncomfortable, and yet still he let me sleep. After a toilet run, I swap places so that he can finally rest, but I am so uncomfortable that i climb over him onto my thermarest and just use his mattress as a pillow, so that I can put my arm around him. I wake at 9am with the coming of the tour buses, and have a little wander about the campsite, eagles eat my rice and the highly flammable stuff I use to start fires.  If they fly low over a fire will they catch alight like a phoenix?
I climb back into the tent after an hour  and doze until he wakes, it is raining again, so we sit by the fire in the shop drinking coffee until it stops and we can start  packing up. I climb into the tent to deflate everything and roll it to stop as much as possible anything getting wet. He expertly rolls my tent up and we wander under the cover, a bus arrives and says we can jump in, out of sheer luck, he is going to La Pateaia on the way so we get to see it anyway, leaning out against the rain soaked glass, to read the signs., we make it to the edge of the world anyway, I laugh, I don’t think much goes wrong when you feel this happy. I tell Juan I dreamt of fishing all night, because it is my calmest moments, and his presence makes me calm.
Then we are heading back, after a long hot shower and repacking we meet for dinner and ravenously demolish our food. I love the way he eats, making the mot of everything and not leaving a morsel on his plate, grateful for the taste and the feeling of contentment afterwards. He says he will meet me at the hostel as I go to buy my bus ticket, and it still hasn’t hit me yet, the profound effect this person has had on me.
He says I can stay at his place, half a block away writing and resting, and I hang out a little while with his flat mate, Matteus and his girlfriend. Tomorrow they will hitch to Bariloche, over 2000kms away, so in one day Juan loses his best mate and me.
They are having a going away dinner for Matteus, but Juan is also covering reception, so he flits in and out to the party and to see me as i read at the front desk, I buy some gin at midnight for the boys, but mostly I drink it. Only 4 and a half hours until the bus and when the partygoers emerge I am in stitches, Matteus is flinging around pamphlets and gets a hold of a fire extinguisher and covers us all in white powder, Juan locks 3 of them outside and Matteus is chasing them down the street with the extinguisher, it looks like snow. I reckon my laughter must be keeping half the hostel awake. Juan is handling all of this with his usual calm nature, and even gets Matteus to clean up a little bit of his mess, the whole hostel is now covered with a thin layer of white powder, and Juan has a lot of cleaning on his hands and he wont let me help, he says he’ll do it after I go.
When it quietens down and it’s just us, I show him pictures of Reunion island, and we listen to spoken word by the beat writers, he listens as I read him 2 of my stories. When we are standing outside in the freezing cold smoking, and he has wrapped me in a thick lovely jacket so not a bit of the cold can get me,  I drunkenly try to explain and have trouble finding the words, the effect that he has on me, I settle for telling him he’s my muse, and I ask if he understands, ‘Musa Inspirando’ he says, ‘yes, that’s it exactly’.
It’s rare if at all you meet people like Juan, and even though I have only been on this trip 2 months I  have already met some awe inspiring people, Trish and Miguel, at least twenty people from the expedition ship whom I spoke to, at least 7 of which I hope will stay in my life forever, honey, my puppy from malalcuehlo
National park, and the slovaks from the bus.
But this is different.
I don’t know how people like Juan exist, such perfect altruism, he said to me last night, only an hour before I left, that he wants to be a good influence on people, that they be better having known him. I am the prime example of his attempts, because  am certainly changed. I am trying to tell him that his care of me and not trying to sleep with me has renewed my  faith in men, he answers that he’s ‘too polite’ I disagree, I think he is just perfection incarnate.
At 4.30 am I left for the bus, and I didn’t look back, because I thought I may change my mind, and given, truly when the bus stopped after only 3 blocks, in an inane surge of gin I asked the bus driver if i  could change my ticket because I felt sick, actually I just wanted to run back. But he said I’d have to pay again, so I sat back down.
So I took that 16hour bus journey and though writers block set in, I thought a lot, and arrived in Peurto Natales with a really upset stomach, and a fever of 38.9c, I went with the first tout that approached me and ended up in a lovely hostel in the north of town. As usual, unwilling to give into sickness, at 10pm I was heading to the supermarket to buy supplies for the five day hike in Torres del Paine national park, but when my fever peaked at 40c I knew I wouldn’t make it for the 7am bus. I totally forgave myself for not being able to walk now.
My 2 weeks of excess, of drinking, smoking, broken sleep, extreme temperatures and strange hours had caught up, and the only real thought I have is if I was going to be this sick, why didn’t I just stay in Ushuaia and be sick with Juan, though if he had seen me last night he would have truly been scared for me. Even that  is a major difference, usually when I am sick, I fight off care and push people at bay, but just this once, I’d have loved him to be there.
I had told him when I left I would use him as a character in a story, thinking our days not enough to write about, but here I am bedridden, a day later writing as much as I can remember, so I don’t miss a moment of knowing him. Of our conversations and his inspiration, of his ability to banish my demons and liquefy my jadedness.
I know this is not good writing, just a feverish attempt at stream of conciousness to hold close a few days of perfection. I told him he would know which character was him when I wrote, though he may be surprised how i see him, but he had answered calmly, ’that he would like to know’.
So I will explain it as best I can, I am, at the best of times, a sentimental fool, in love with life and it’s lessons and easily hurt by unnecessary dramas or disloyalty. I find a lot of beauty in people and moments and just as easily get crushed by them, never weighing it as good or bad, just experience. At times i love to easily, but I have only once ever felt like this before.
I know what it is not, it is not some blind passion where I want to own him or possess him, it is not the lost for words heart fluttering instability of infatuation and the insecurities that come with it.
It is a whole respect and awe that such a perfect being exists! With a mind like a sabre that cuts through every topic, yet has its own strength and understanding, is modest and kind. He contemplates, listens and sees aspects which I can hardly even think of, and expands my mind with every comment or question. I have never felt so safe or known to another person in my life. It’s like he saw my soul that first night, just decided it was worth cultivating, and spent successive days doing just that. My Muse.
At 28 Juan, you have more calm and knowing than anyone, you are good at everything, and amazing at more..
You worked such long hours and still made so much time for me, and you will never know how grateful I am for meeting you and having you in my life, I can never thank you enough for lifting my black veil, accepting me for who I am, and then improving me.
There is no internet, or I’d post these pages right now, but I suppose it’s late and I should let this sick body rest. I don’t know if you will remain in my life but I hope so, through the fever of last night  I dreamt of sailing with you on  Richo’s yacht and diving the reef. But if not I will keep these pages as recollection of perfect days and the most positive inspiration of my life. Thank You!
I don’t know how you feel about me, or if that even matters, only that to me you are sublime, my satori, my nirvana, my enlightenment.

I pull back so they can’t see me. Few foreigners branch out here, and so we take on the silhouette of a money tree, so it seems. I can’t, again, handle the attention of twelve young monks in order of size and agility scrambling up onto my precarious balcony in request of offerings.

Funny how, in the misty mornings half light, they carry the same deep food bowl of Prince Saddartha- Buddha, to procure alms, but they have placed a plate on top, so you can only give money. Later in the market in the big city, they will bicker over who bought the best MP3 player, aaahh Buddhism.

Lumpy water, for there is no other way to explain Inle, stretching there, away in the shadows of the mountains. It’s people have woven together reed mats and planted within them, tomatoes and herbs, a giant hydroponics experiment. And tufts of unruly vegetables palpitate on the lakes surface.

Sticks, metres long, secure them in place and occasionally, on top of these sticks are little reed huts and ladders leading up. They live on nothing, literally, and every now and then, a small cry of astonishment, as they fall through their floor, the windy day rocking the suspended impossible huts.

Luckily, they have parked boast and rafts beneath them to fall into, they rise, brush themselves off and the oar wound around one leg they paddle out to their gardens. Like an aboriginal frozen in dance, they stand.

One knee and foot moving the oar, the other for balance, their hands free to spiral out the nets to bring in the vegetables, or (Buddha/God forbid) fish, if they miss.

Morning heats up fast in Northern Burma, there have been no lights to go out to herald the mornings sun, electricity a distant dream. It is it’s own timeand place, to twist upon, renew and regale. Every little happening is an epic, so little they have to talk about.

Consequence is quiet. Simplicity of living, simplicity of speech, in over a week I have barely uttered more than 2 sentences, and I don’t want that to change. My mind has slowed to a pace of natural meditation, where you can see things just as they are, and not how you wish them to be.

It feels just right.

I’m going to Die, and that’s Ok.

The Black Butterfly has wound itself around my liver. Its wings beat softly on the

tissue it’s yet to destroy.

They warn me I will go through stages, they are knocking, beating against my

carefully constructed defenses, but I wont let them in. They sit peripherally on my

Conscience, as I try to keep going, as I always have. As I always will.

I personify the cancer as a black butterfly because that’s how it comes to me in my

dreams. He is not ragged, he his beautiful! Big, glossy with white treble clefs

reversed on his wings.

Maybe I see him this way because unlike most, who feel the stereo type of

‘Cancer’ as ‘Death sentence’, I know that for him even to appear is a genetic

wonder in a toxic society .

Knowing that cancer forms from the oxygen which gives me life and energy.

Bouncing repeatedly against the telomeres (hairs on the edge of a DNA strand, which

stop it copying itself) And breaking them off so that the cells go wild reproducing

themselves attacking other cells in their new life, and in my case, forming themselves

into a black butterfly with white, reversed treble clef wings.

Sure, I am seeing it all, I’m trying. Bouncing between emotions and answers, that

Simple intrinsic intuition to survive.

I feel the first question threaten every day Why me? Why me?

Then brush it away like lint from my favourite jumper, but how long can this hold out

for?

It wants to sooth itself in flashes of anger upon those I love, who cannot know. To

Those I don’t, who may have deserved this more than me. At least I see this now, this

unique dance for happiness that everyone pursues. It eluded me in my own illusion,

Until now, so caught up in my own dance. But they are all butterflies, coloured,

courting, dancing butterflies. Doing the best they can with limited resources.

But I let the anger hang round the edges of my psyche because it will do no good

elsewhere, better to store it up, save my strength, save myself.

There are other questions too, What did I do to deserve this? I don’t smoke or drink,

no vices, so to speak. I’m not the healthiest person, preferring to read and write than

exercise. But there is nothing bad I do, so WHY?

Why has my body withered so?

The chemotherapy takes my youth, they are goblins eating my cake. They have

feasted from the inside out! When I look in the mirror, she’s not me, not the me I

remember, or what I feel I look like when I’m alone.

Friends and Family, ooooh they are the hard ones. They no longer share ‘normal’ life

with me, the bickers and gossips and problems, because they see their problems as

small compared to mine. They don’t want to ‘tax’ me. This distancing makes me feel

as if I am already dead. The sympathy, the sadness in their eyes. Like it’s made whole

each time they see me, that it may be the last time. This truly, is more poisonous than

the cancer. Believe in me I want to scream, I’ll pull through! I am just as interested in

your lives, as I always was.

The exception- my Daughter- that strong willed little bitch. She doesn’t want to

understand, or share my pain or give sympathy. Her anger at my ‘giving in’ and

accepting doctor’s time constraints and doses for life is palpable. She believes while

alive, you should just be living it. She has been chronically ill for most of her life,

she’s danced with death and has known pain every day for 23 years.

She is the closest to me, it is the ones you love most, you hurt most. It is to her I made

the mistake of screaming

‘You don’t know what I’m going through, You don’t know what it’s like to be in

pain.’

She had only smiled and turned away. I didn’t see her for weeks after that. Because

she had known pain all her life, but she had never, ever put it onto others the way

I put it on to her, She had never known sympathy or anything except for the yearning

of a ‘normal life’ a glowing strength within her to not quit, to never quit.

It was the turning point.

The point I choose to ‘live through this.’ I am not existing, or waiting to die, my

bucket list expands and within that, the will to push on and through.

Finding it difficult to believe a Doctors concepts of my time bomb life span. I will

make plans for a future that may not be. Grasp them closely as an alternative source

of food for my black butterfly. Feed on my new dreams, creature, not my life force.

The learning curve of your wings are this: No one can know what I am going through

and I have no right to expect them too. This is a personal journey, a personal

experience and how I feel about myself is most important- there are moments of

weakness as the wings enfold me, but I will remain strong, I will not wither. I can not

surround myself with other cancer patients who will understand, because I feel that is

feeding the problem and at times like this, ignorance is bliss. I want to know what I

am capable of, not surrounded by the stages of what might be, of the degradation of

My health, mind and body.

Maybe, this reversed treble clef, black winged butterfly is exactly that, natures

beautiful anomaly, with a very, very limited life span.

Soon my butterfly will have to die.

Leaving me here, with my new dreams, new experiences, new confidence and new

wings.

As my mind will succumb to dementia, it is these moments that will return, held. Those made in the softness of being, closer to the heart than the head. But now opened on the world, the world opens up to me, and I fall into it’s web, moment to movement, movement to moment.

Wafting on the waves of wind, spices circumvent my senses. These walls are thousands of years young, scourged and gorged with histories accidents, the alley so thin, that with arms outstretched, you can follow their braillic story with your fingertips. But you can’t. They are bustling about you, gliding and bumping, shrouded in blues and blacks from head to toe. Chadors to protect their beauty, your wanting of them. Since when did mystery cease to become seductive? It is more powerful, what you don’t know. When curiosity grows like vines to strangle you.

You’re telling yourself it’s no different than what you know, so you learn to forget, then you can make it new. It carries no blame, no right or wrong. It carries ‘is’ and you flow with the movement of the moment.

When you recover from the sneezes and your eyes open, they have adjusted along with your mind. You follow the crowd, along the cobbled road to the market, and it’s only now that you have accepted there is nothing really different here at all, that you are all just living, just being. That they see YOU as different, you’ve felt for your money belt and it’s gone.

For one moment, you hope that they need it more than you. Then anger floods in, on the tide of the Bay of Fundy. Virtues pop out of the mud, to bounce on a wave of thick requirement to believe in Human Nature.

perfume,

earrings,

money,

and bows…….but no you

I took my seat and started to dine
On the lovely roast turkey and bubbly wine
And I pulled those crackers with a laughing face
Till I realised there was no-one in your place

There was,

pudding,

pies,

nuts,

and custard……but no you

Now it’s New Years Eve and its Auld Lange Syne
And its 12 o’clock and I’m feeling fine
Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?
I don’t know boy, but it hurts a lot

There was,

Streamers,

wine,

people,

and 12 new years resolutions….

All of them about you

So it’s all the best for the year ahead
As I stagger upstairs and hop into bed
I looked at the pillow by my side
And I tell you baby, I almost cried

There’ll be,

Autumn,

Summer,

Spring,

and Winter….All of them without you

It’s only the first time
So don’t blame me
I didn’t have time to learn
Maybe if I’d met you later
I wouldn’t have made so many mistakes
Don’t blame a young heart

Don’t blame me for
Not letting go
For thinking we’d still be friends
When you said it was over
You were only the first
So don’t ever
Blame a young heart

-By Carmen Major

From An Anthology of Verse and Prose

Still we’d like to stay together, though
Together’s far apart
And it never seemed to matter (back then)
That I wasn’t in your heart

And then I took you with me
To the valley where I hide
And I helped twist in further
The only thorn in your side

Back then you could not understand
How I could never walk away
When the hardest thing you never faced
Was when I made you stay

So you were running away from something
That didn’t have a name
And you left me scared and lonely
When you’d finished up your game

But I was on the Other Side
I wouldn’t leave you to return
I hadn’t been taken far enough
There was still a lot to learn

They tell me to grow up now
But to hold on to my youth
And now that I’m on your side
I’m finding out the truth

You’ll tempt me with your rebel ways
Forever and a day
And I’ll spend all that time searching for you
My heart will find a way

And when I turn against you
When I’ve lost heart and piece of mind
And I don’t care about anything (but you)
I’ll be one of your kind

But that was the way you wanted me
Not to be that naive child
And you love me more than life itself
Now I hold your wild smile

I twist that thorn in so deeply
Let you choose your place to hide
And then I lay down next to you
And we let our worlds collide

And then we slipped in dreamily
Between worlds you and I
And I remember how I never want to face
What was on the Other Side

-By Carmen Major

From An Anthology of Verse and Prose

-By Carmen Major

From An Anthology of Verse and Prose

Yet sometimes only one word can describe an entire country. In Israel, it was ‘suspicious’. Here, it is ‘puffy’. Nearly all of china is puffy – it’s miniature dogs in the towns, it’s Dr Seuss trees hugging rock pillars. The woolly yaks on the Tibetan plateau. Puffy.

And just like the rest of Asia, it is ‘in need of maintenance’. They build these grand, amazing structures, plant gorgeous botanical gardens, articulately lay tiles and designs, and then allow nature to reconstruct them, or let them fall apart.

The only thing about china that is not ‘puffy’ is the language, It’s Evil.

I read the phonetically spelt roman numeral word from my phrasebook, accenting with the clippie Chinese tongue to allow for better understanding. They look at me strangely, most never even trying to understand. Then they say the word back to me, and I nod vigorously. I say it again. They seem dumbfounded. I think I’ve said it exactly the same way, but in a country where Xie can mean horse, fire or Tuesday depending on the tone. Well, lets just say it’s no fun being tone deaf in china.

They must also be colour blind, my pants are blue I tell you, blue, not green.
And as the Yellow River lives up to her name, during the floods.  Jouyuping says to me ‘always clear, today yellow’ on the tributary flowing in, I’d somehow call it muddy brown, but I am just a visitor, so who am I to argue?

-By Carmen Major

From An Anthology of Verse and Prose