A naive Canadian family from Toronto decide to move for one year to Bali and another to Berlin, with some heavy travel everywhere else in between... what were they thinking?

From a mild mannered, livable Canadian city to the hot rice fields of Bali; theatre, tropics, geckos, rats, ants and homemade everything to the cool, funky world of Berlin; theatre, subways, grey skies, recycling and automatic everything. Can they manage the stress? The culture shock? The weather changes? The time changes? The school changes? The skype calls? The visas? The airports? The diarrhea? The Lonely Planet guides? The frequent flier miles? Will the side trip to India ever happen in the midst of all this stress? Are they mad? Did they pack the right clothes? (Socks, I forgot people wear socks. Is that the suitcase with my shorts or my down vest?) How did Uzbekistan get on the agenda? Georgia? Where is Georgia? Does this country have poisonous spiders? This is toilet paper? This is NOT toilet paper... this is toilet paper?

Watch them mix everything up... offending everyone without knowing whilst being frustratingly polite... no, I don't think they are American, see the moose T shirt? Vielen Kasih! Selamat Aben!

So am I German? My name sounds German, my heavy frame, pale blue eyes and brown hair say German, people here do not hesitate to talk to me in German... I love German literature and music (who doesn't).
I am very almost annoyingly, frank... Unlike many Canadians I know who have far more tact and grace than I... I ate a lot of sauerkraut as a kid...

I am curious to talk with my African American friends who are descendants of slaves... Which of them feels, African in some deep way, and if they visit there, is there a sense of going home? Of course that is loaded with so much more with slavery...

I am sure this has been written about. I do often feel as if I have no cultural heritage... I am a European mutt, no old roots near by... And as I left my early religious affiliations, my father was a Lutheran Minister, but left the church so long ago, I have no traditions in that arena, not to mention moving from one home to another for various reasons when I was young... And becoming a Baha'i at 9 then connected me to Persian culture... In Nova Scotia... Via a Lebanese woman!

In a sense, Baha'i is the closest thing i have to a long standing cultural community, yet it has no specific cultural identity and works hard to resist Persian cultural traditions so that it can remain a global community...

Sure I could generically say that I am a world citizen... But that feels superficial, despite my current traveling lifestyle... I am truly curious if these distant German roots will show themselves somehow if I live here for a year, and yet, if they do, will it all be projection?

Any one? Thoughts on this??

yikes... public versus private, location, British versus American and/or German, cost, location, how much German immersion after a year of Bahasa Indonesian? and French?... we are so very fortunate to have choices at this level and to have such detailed information on these schools and yet we still can't decide...  they are all good choices... just variations on some themes really.

In a few days i head to Berlin and then Munich, can't believe it really... the next few months the whirlwind continues.My Bahasa Indonesian will surely mix with whatever German i can manage to remember for High School.

Bali is special and it is now in my heart....

that is likely the wrong way to say it- but the way that I can at this moment! Meaning, my Indonesian is getting slowly better every day!

I tried not to just use google translate for that! I spoke several full sentences today without having to look anything up!! and I was understood! Yahooooo! I never thought I'd be learning a third language at this age! even though I still search for the word in Indonesian and end up in the French part of my brain!

I find this so painful and I am so grateful to be experiencing it so intimately. I daily want to run away to the west and back to the comfort of it all being hidden... not knowing why my rice is so cheap, or even thinking about it. Not questioning the endless cheap plastic objects i use everyday or wondering why they are so cheap and who makes them...

so here, where some of my neighbors still work for rice, where the monthly minimum wage is $130 a month approximately and where I am stinking rich in comparison... I am daily forced to encounter this reality.

A wise friend who has lived with this in his work his whole live, an experienced world traveler with a deep and generous heart, when I was consulting with him about these various issues said... well

When you have decided not to give all your money away...

I can't remember what he said next, but yes, I got it. At some point, when I realize that I am not going to give all my money away and when the reality of that sets in, I can begin maybe to see where, in small but hopefully meaningful ways I can contribute... but one does start to think bigger, deeper. It is required. I am so lost still, about it all... so lost. But the I am lost in ways that I could never have been before, and that is a good thing.

but really the time was about kindness... cheesy as it sounds. I was hosted with such love... and generosity. The Baha'is in Yerrinbool and the artists that I met on the Uzkebistan trip were SO amazingly loving and openhearted and generous- it made me think... how can I move here?

the friendliness of the animals, i am now convinced reflects the friendlliness of the people and viceversa (let's not make an analogy with the poisonous ones!) 

anyway, forget tourism, museums, nature parks; go stay with some loving people...

rather than rewrite what i wrote for my family blog- it is above.. a post with pictures from the ceremony near our house in... this is from some time ago now

IF you have kids 1 of the best pieces of advise someone gave us that has served us well- don’t assume parenting is intuitive or that you will just figure it out. STUDY PARENTING. READ BOOKS. TAKE COURSES.

even with all the contradictions, gambling, superstition, the sexism etc…

 I met a Christian man - a fundamentalist Baptist from the US... and that was as equally fascinating as the superstitious Buddhists I was surrounded by…

He was traveling with a group of young men (a church trekking thing in Burma)

- they believe that Christ will return in the clouds... now that is some serious faith that overrides common sense and science…

hard for me to fathom but I respect there commitment and especially there sense of service

but in many ways no different from the superstitious beliefs I was seeing in the temples and the spirit houses. It is easy for westerners to reject Christianity and move towards Buddhism because they can extract from Buddhism what suits them and reject the trappings of Christianity when we know that Christ and Buddha and what they taught, essentially, is not so different… what was built up around them also, is not so different either… the male institutions, the blind followers AND all the beauty that both faiths brought… moral values, order, community, orphanages, education… we can easily forget and overlook what these communities have and still provide so many people…

People here (Thailand) do seem to understand meditation and reverence and 'the spirit' is given great respect, even though few seem to actually meditate.

In Thailand they also have spirit houses at the temples where they make the wildest offerings…  As I see the endless Buddha images (and monk images and other ‘gods’ and how they are venerated superficially and externally sometimes, I am growing to appreciate Moses ending the idols… and then Jesus saying 'Ye shall have no gods before me' and then Muhammed saying no images of people even in the mosques… I get those things here very strongly-

it all starts to make sense when you see so many images of Buddha everywhere that people are bowing before, praying to,even shaking containers while ‘praying’ filled with numbers to chose which lottery number to chose (which they then buy right outside the temple door)

-but still there are a few people who were actually meditating… and at times the temples were so peaceful and beautiful I joined them and wanted to stay… like Sacre Coeur in Paris, it transcends the tourists around it, or Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, where Gaudi instills praise of God right into the very bones of that building to the point where it brings me tears… to deny that these buildings or the temples I am surrounded by here are not inspired by something greater than our intellects can grasp is incomprehensible to me

also, the beauty of the time/energy/community focused on beauty and art and 'spirit' is pretty compelling

and back in Toronto I understand why people are setting up little Shrines with images of Buddha and Shiva and Ganesha and yet I resist this, I even resist images in my home from my own faith practice… I resist my own childlike magical thinking being triggered by these images. We must grow up and hold onto independent, inner search for truth hand in hand with science without losing Faith… and I do mean Faith with a capital F, God with a capital G… that transcends the father time I hope we all keep rejecting and all the patriarchal, disempowering, power mongering baggage that goes along with it…

 -so these Buddha statues-

inspiration? or superstition? one would of course assume the former in the best circumstances, but here, without the cultural inside info, it is hard to tell…

 A Writing I am very focused on at the moment

'My love is in thee, know it, that thou mayest find Me near unto thee'

Baha’u’llah

I very much want to find that inner sense of love

again another favorite of mine from Baha'u'llah that I can't get enough of-

'...turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting.'

And I want the big, father, external god, and the magical thinking about god to fade away… 

http://teochriserika.wordpress.com/

I am trying to keep my family stuff off this website and focus it on work/art/research!

I am in love with this angel...

this was some kind of crazy fun urban park... purple carpet, purpet trees... fun, fun, fun...

Sure I don't like the slowing down and the weight gain and the creeking bones, but the little tiny bits of new wisdom are HUGE in comparison to the lose of cartilage...

We went to the bank to add someone to our safety deposit box for our upcoming trip... to put in wills etc...

when we got into the vault, the person we were adding, placed her things on top of a smaller vault... when she gathered her thing, her passport and drivers license were nowhere to be found... we checked every inch of the bank, all our bags over and over... meanwhile we were sorting papers to go into our box between searching... we finally realized that they had fallen BEHIND the vault, that was enormously heavy. Our friend went out and bought some long thin things... knitting needles and fly swatters... so now we are IN the vault with knitting needles and fly swatters in various undignified positions trying to get them... finally we moved a filling cabinet next to the vault and after much reaching and moving they were retrieved...

There were moments when we wondered if the people at the bank thought that this might be some elaborate heist manouver but they never once showed concern that here we were IN their vault shoving fly swatters behind their vault...

the customer service in this situation in this TD bank was EXCEPTIONAL, casual, warm, fun, unalarmed, easy going and helpful...

Abdu'l-Baha-

'By faith is meant, first, conscious knowledge, and second, the practice of good deeds.'

and

'as ye have faith, so shall your powers and blessings be'

so...

so therefore i deduce... as you have conscious knowedge and practice good deeds, so shall your powers and blessings be...

so I am trying to move from the idea that I either have faith or I do not have faith

to assuming that I am greatly remedial in this area (dah) and that I must

WORK ON DEVELOPING FAITH- ok so to most of you this is likely not news... but I am thick... very thick

and this was a revelation to me... like with actors or artists, those not exerpienced often think they either 'have it' or they do not ('he is so creative!' like it is a personality trait rather than a skill set) 

whereas with doctors... well we would not want someone to operate simply because they 'have it'!

So the dumbing down of art is similiar to the dumbing down of religion maybe?

So really we actually have to practice faith, study it, read the Kitab-i- Iqan if you are a Baha'i (the Book of Ceritude)

or study the suffering of the prophets or great leaders...

If Martin Luther King could do it, if he could have faith in his vision, his goal, despite enormous obstacles... and die for it... can that not inspire me? BUT I MUST CHOSE TO STUDY HIS LIFE AND WORDS... not just have that passing idea... and chose to follow in his footsteps and practice deeds that align with what I long to have manifest...

he did not wait for equality and bemoan the plight of the African American community... and wonder why, if he had 'faith' God did not magically fix things... no

he turned the Words he loved and knew well from his Beloved Christ into action...

that is faith

whether you think they are great artist moments or not... Bob Dylan, Bruce Cockburn, Cat Stevens.. to name a few. have all made 'religious' albums and Jane Siberry/Issa bravely goes there all the time in her way... and U2, well COEXIST is pretty cool...

and I think this has contributed to all of their over all work/process, regardless of how 'good' the work was/is made in this context... making work with a spiritual/scriptural base I think is quite hard and perhaps advanced in a way and perhaps we all aspire to be able to create work that holds Light and Joy and Ecstacy and Trtuh and we will always fall short

angst is easy, pain is profound... but art about ecstacy??? that is something to strive for, even if you fall short... so you go MJ!!! 

here is her website:

http://mjcyr.com/about

she has a gig at the Transac club in Toronto at 8pm this coming Sunday April 29th eve! I hope to be there!

but the talkback was really helpful... I learned stuff and it inspired me and I am grateful for that... they are brave and they include their inspiration RIGHT IN THEIR SHOWS... made we wonder why I do not... issues of rights? feel like I am stealing? they borrow movement, text, video, sound... it is like theatre sampling and they have the chops to own it and integrate it -so it does not feel like stealing... that inspried me

As I am currently on and off in the studio working on this new solo- that will be one thing that will come up here, but the real work studio stuff will be in the studio journal... all the fun travel stuff (as we are moving to Bali for 6 months in July and then... who knows!) will also be in here- so pictures will be here!

Also York stuff will be here and also anything Baha'i will be here... although as my studio practice and Faith are so intimate these days - that will be in my studio journal as well...