Time Traveling in Melaka

Tuesday, April 17, 2007


“Global Village Malaysia” Time Traveling in Melaka

Went upstairs for coffee, a thick haze hangs over the city of Melaka, which appears as if until in recent geologic time, this was an ocean bottom and a few low lying hills or volcanoes rose about the sea bed. I look out from the luxury of this three star hotel the canal which snakes through the city is still, grey green, and filled with effluence. It is a tattered city worn with poverty and age
There is a section to the south which is for the native Sumatrans who settled her centuries ago. The roofs fold up like squeezed paper or like folded hands, similar to the roofs in Bangkok, though they are ruddy rusty worn, and far less elegant. Yesterday some kids were jumping off a bridge ten meters high into the thick green canal; I hope they had their hepatitis B shots! It actually looks fun and I could almost be tempted to take a leap into the canal. Yet, not many look as they have active hepatitis.
Though I miss my home in southern Vermont, it’s a protected cocoon, in many ways it’s a great comfort and crucible for my creative process; nevertheless, it’s too disconnected from the larger world. Despite the hidden relative poverty, it’s a wealthy community. Most of the world is Third World, living life on the most modest of means, but Third World doesn’t mean emotional or spiritual poverty; there just aren’t enough of the basic elements – clean drinking water, adequate food, access to good health care and education… those things we take for granted in the West.

More Cranky Political Arrows at Pox Americana: Nevertheless, in the US with over ninety million people without access to health care and having minimal access to primary health care and infant mortality rates being about 30 in the world, way below Cuba and other 3rd world countries, it makes you wonder where the real poverty is. The US spends over $500 billion dollars on military, police, government security operations, CIA, military aid to other countries, etc.; it has all the means to provide education, health care, food to each one of its citizens. This is a spiritual poverty that values militarism, consumerism, and the global POX AMERICANA vision. The empire is a fear based religion. Aren’t most?
As we step away from our small communities, it really is like that Brigadoon world where the community sleeps for a hundred years and wakes up for one day, and that one day is a world of great joy. Though I thoroughly love my routine at home – wake up, write for a few hours or more, exercise, play my guitar and music, manage my businesses of Vermont Poet.com, Sweet Pond, Dr.Namaya, Grace Cares, etc. I need to step away from that world periodically. It is when there is longing in our hearts and spirit, and we know “why” we truly love our home, that we can genuinely appreciate it. We tend to love our homes life instinctually, without understanding what truly brings us peace and joy.
I step outside of Vermont in the broader stage, though I’m a US American by upbringing and custom; I’m a world citizen. Put me at a dinner table with six languages floating around and I’m in my milieu, though I may not be fluent in any or all of them, my ears and senses revel in this world language and culture.
With my Irish citizenship and EU passport, and this sensibility as World Citizen, I’m as home in Europe as I am in the US and quite comfortable in Morocco or any one of a number of places on the globe. I find that the world cultures feed my soul immeasurably. I am the quintessential travel junkie. I love hearing languages, observing different cultures, watching people, and though I can easily do this in Paris, London, or NYC; I want to observe people in their own milieu. I want to see the Malaysians in their own community, the Singaporeans, and so forth.
But I could not be completely happy being in some remote village in the Mongolian steppes, the role and identity I’ve chosen in this life as an artist and writer is someone who is passionately engage in modern life. Not just my sack full of I-pods, computers, DAT recorders, adapters, emails, blog sites, cell phones, etc., but the world culture of travel, museums, books, music and so forth. I revel in the world of ideas and the exchange of ideas.
Then I take exception to what I’ve said, I recall being in Ladak high in the Himalays with a peacefulness of spirit that I can rarely recall elsewhere. The school children calling out “Joolee!” (hello, how are you) and inviting you with gracious ease into their homes, the people chanting Buddhist scriptures in the streets as easily as breathing. Perhaps, I can be at peace in these remote mountains.
Oddly enough on this trip, I was reading essays by Carruth on jazz and literature and he had an insight of Finnegan’s Wake as the non-verbal language. Joyce was an Irish man drunk with words! Tippling mad soaked wandering through the tubercular alleys of Dublin.
I find the DaDa both by the Police and Dali as icons of that language. The intersection of cultural influences, Dali and the Police, hmmm!
Long desire to write about Dali. I had written some journal entries periodically on him, my experience in Figueroa, recently in St. Petersburg Florida, and the relationship with Gaudi. Part of this start with the blog, getting my essays out of draft form, and to start writing more.
Stepping out of ordinary time in Vermont. Away from my email, away from my office of busy correspondence and projects. Immersing myself in writing. The temptation always is to be in my RV, pop up VW camper and travel the roadways of the world. Play my guitar, perform as little or as much as I want, write my poetry and stories, make art. I am a citizen only of the place that I put my pillow down at night. I dream often of that life. Back in Europe, winter in Morocco or Tunisia or further a field. I love Essouria in the winter, and thoroughly at peace. Writing on the beach. My last days will be in a place like Essouria, playing Spanish guitar, the rhythm spoken by the waves against the sandstone rocks, and the slow setting sun will be the lush tone for my song. Then as I’m in the middle of this reverie, a Moroccan kid comes by and tries to sell me a carpet or rent his sister, or two for the price of one. I give him a few dirhams to bring me back a pot of fresh mint tea. “Gypsy Soul” – Travels on the Cheap. My new travel book.
I get too caught up in the parochial affairs of my small town. Need the stage of the wider world where this gypsy soul can wander as free as he needs. Here in Malaysia, my thoughts take me back to Essouria, VW camper on the beach south of the city, one eye always open to bandits, but the other eye gazing at the stars, senses filled with the sound of the waves and the full moon with the phosphorescent diamonds bursting on the waters edge. Have I confused the places I love?
I’m a time traveler, in a heart beat, I’m recalling Hodeidah in Yemen where the sea was always phosphorescent by my window, when I sat in the windows of my mufraj (living room) the moon stretched out all the way to Djibouti across the sea, I could almost walk on that road of phosphorescent bones. In the morning, before dawn, the fishing scows would have their sails raised high, the men would be singing and chanting, some words I could catch in that cacophony of wind and sound, “Good fishing today. Wind is right. Sky clear. Seas peaceful. Allah will guide us.”
Birds of Melaka, what are the names of those birds with their shrieking cacophony in the trees by Queen Victoria’s tower? There is a fountain in front of the clock tower that is for Queen Victoria. Like most of the world around the year 1900 it was occupied by the English. I find it quite charming that the water fountain shoots upwards to the central shaft, it almost seems like the subjects are pissing upwards on the royal shaft of the empire? Perhaps, its only my little twisted imagination, and with nary a trace of disrespect to the Queen Empress -- hmmm. I tried to explain this to a waitress at the Raffles Hotel equating parasitism of the colonialism.
Enjoying the port city of Melaka. The Sultans palace, albeit rebuilt, by the Portuguese fortress from the early 1500’s. Curious it mentioned that the Portuguese built this with slave labor, though I know that slavery was just as prevalent before their arrival, but the Portuguese were not one to endear themselves to anyone. And of course, the Arabs where intimately engaged in the mass Diaspora of slaves to the new world, and it is odd that the Black American Muslims chose to ignore that piece of history. Another detour in history and time.
Street scene. Muslim women with headscarves most modest in pastel colours and easily worn. Why are the French so uptight with the hejab? They should feel threatened by the underclass that hates the French. Colonialism comes back to roost and bite the French in the ass. The Pied Noir – black foots will kick them. Algiers again in flames. New of the world on this trip. CNN infiltrates, Herald Tribune, all the media sources inflame our sense of fear.
Sunset over Melaka, broad orange strokes of sun, and prayer call in the distance. Familiar as one after another picks up the call, from one mosque to the next, voices carry the prayer in the wind. The peace of Islam, the call to the faithful, the submission to kneel on the carpet, and bow to Mecca. The simplicity of prayer.
Earlier today, stopped at the Melaka Islamic Museum down by the harbor. The building once housed the Dutch officers and today this is a good exhibit with a fine perspective on the overall development of Islam in Malaysia. Several pieces are outstanding in particular a large bronze sura (verse from the Koran) and some beautiful Korans themselves. I find as I read and slowly pronounce the words in my rudimentary Arabic I am drawn to the beauty of the writing and the words; however, I’m highly dubious of all religions whether Muslim, Christian or otherwise. This is even more apparent when I see the exhibit on the Sharia and the mandate of certain punishments. Chopping a hand off for stealing. A truly enlightened religion would understand why the person stole and offer him the means not to do that. But as I’m going to be in KL at the end of the week, I will stop this discourse. Though I have a profound appreciation for the art and architecture of Islam, having seen Islamic design from Granada to Asia, and have found it to be of immense fascination. More on my extensive writings on Islam. The title of that book is Infidel’s Journey in Islam. Lots of notes on the journey.

I often struggle for belonging in my home community which is a nice melody in a C major, maybe a bit of an A minor, and a bit of a bluesy rift for cultural divergence, but for whatever alchemical twist, I’m more like a Coltrane composition, choosing odd minor keys and with sublime ease changing tempos. It is jarring sometimes as I change, I look over to the other side of the stage, and see is there someone else jamming? Is she hip enough to change keys at a moment’s notice? I am. As exquisitely attuned to differences in cultures and I’m even a superb site reader; however, I can be astonishingly tone deaf at other times. I assume that if I’m operating in English it is a fluid communication – at least my English is clear. Need to work on my cross cultural skills for the US. Hell, I even taught a graduate course in Cross Cultural Communication! Part of it is – less coffee! Too wired. Nerves jangled. There is so much inner dialogue and dialogue with the world around me; I need to shut down some of the extra channels

Phones Cell phone across the world. How is this possible that I can pick up a phone in my pocket and talk to someone at the other side of the world? Though I have become long habituated to the increases in technology, I remember as a child to get a call through to the states you needed to call the local operator who would ring the states and put the call through. Or, if it was the Middle East you needed to go to the central telephone station to place the call and if you were lucky you could get a phone call through in less than an hour. Astonishing is having access to email, telephone, and we still haven’t successfully navigated the ability to communicate the vision of a peaceful world.
Though I am always a traveler, always a westerner and a white Westerner, I’m a well-versed traveler who can be at home in my different cultures. Chameleon like to some extent, as much as my guise of an affluent white person will allow me. When I’m back in my “home” community of Vermont and look around the audience of all white people, I’m disoriented. It’s not because I have the remotest sense of political correctness, god forbid, but this is not the real world I live in; my real world is brown, yellow, black, and the bazaar of cultures that have and continue to feed my soul.
As an artist and writer, I’m a mongrel US American. My soul is fed from the rich stew that is American. My identity as a US American is drawn from African American, Islam, Quaker, Buddhism, Irish, and the myriad of elements that have influenced and shaped this 52 year old man. As this mongrel culture we should be smooth and fluent in our relationship to the world instead of oppositional and aggressive.


Melaka a small town on the coast of Malaysia and walking through the streets with the gutters flowing with the stench of sewage. A familiar smell which always is that I’m back in a Third World country. It reminds me of Yemen of many years ago. It is the smells of a place that transport you back in time. Backyards with the smell of chicken shit takes me back to a house in Spain some 45 years ago. The limbic system, the most primitive of senses, and the most basic to our sense of orientation key us in to our environment.

This afternoon wandering through the Chinatown. Went to this terrific vegetarian restaurant called Vegan Salad and Herb House and lunch was about $3. Though it was in a hole in the wall, my instinct was that it was clean. Lunch was this delicious tray of cooked vegetables and salad,

More to come and today off to Kuala Lampur and the Azis Mosque.

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Namaya