FROM TAIWAN...

Love to everybody from Taipei, Taiwan. It is very hot and humid here and sometimes it rains cats and dogs during the day.
I did not write in long time, still not used to the blog, I hope I will become more efficient soon and connect more often. Nikhil, do you remember him? told me the other day I have to post one every week…..
A lot has happened since last time, I have been in many places, taken many planes, done many groups, met many people, read many books…..
I have just finished a workshop, a new one, called ‘Touching The Inner Child’, very sweet, a combination of Inner Child Work and healing through touch.
I have been coming to this country already 10 years, it is an interesting place, and an interesting situation, it is kind of a marathon: every week-end a group, every Wednesday a night event and every day sessions, lots of them. I go over my limits many times in the period I am here, I reach bottom, I get scared I might not be able to continue, that my body collapses and then… more energy starts coming I don’t know from where….not easy for my body. In the same time my creativity is very active here, I get many ideas, in fact some of the workshops I facilitate have been designed in Taiwan, just like this one that just ended this evening.
Most of the participants were new to this kind of work and to meditation. I was once again amazed how, just after one day, the faces change, become more alive, the child surfaces, people who did not know each other before start playing, they laugh, they cry, they hug each other, as if they have been friends since always….beautiful…
One more week here then I will fly to Milano, my home town, and then to Mexico. I am looking forward to going there, it feels like an adventure. I will keep you informed how things will be on the other side of the world (well….compared to here…everything is relative..)
I read many books, lets see if I remember them all, probably not, I will only mention some:
‘Rock Me Gently’ by Judith Kelly, the true story of girls in an orphanage in England, abused by the nuns. I read it in a couple of days, I could not put it down. Sweet how the children learned to survive and take care of themselves. I was angry, and not only at the nuns, but at the mother as well, who abandoned her child there, closed her eyes and ears and even later on told her daughter she should forget the past. For what I remember she never took responsibility and never apologized to her daughter. Some people doubted that the facts described really happened, well….I don’t, children are still the most abused class in the world and unconscious people full of pain keep on finding temporarily relief in tormenting helpless beings they have power over. As long as people don’t grieve come to terms with their past they are bound to keep on reenacting . That’s what those nuns did with dramatic consequences, that’s what parents keep on doing, even in the so called good families.
Then I read ‘Suite Francaise’ by Irene Nemirovsky. I bought this book still in Pune and I was carrying it with me since months till I finally felt like reading it when I was in Kiev. I did not know anything about the author. Just after I had started I got curious, where this woman was from and what had been her life. And I found a chapter at the end of the book telling her story, so I found out she was actually born in Kiev, the very same city I was in that moment, she was a Jew who later on escaped to France and died in a concentration camp. For some reason, which could be my childhood, my family role, or a past life, or who knows what….I feel very connected to the Jews and when I am in the ex communist countries I feel a heaviness, the fear and pain experienced by millions of people who were persecuted,I feel it in the air, I can breathe it, I can see it as something dark that surrounds everything. Very nice book, by the way, I really enjoyed it.
While in Israel I read ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’. Great, fun, intelligent, Philip Roth is a genius. The description of the jewish family, extremely accurate and hilarious. Strange enough not many people there read it and it is not available in English and it is out of print in Hebrew.
In Milano I bought and read ‘Viva Israele’ by Magdi Allam. I enjoyed reading it for the way it is written is very pleasant and it is interesting for me who spend so much time in that country and feel so at home there.
At the airport in Amsterdam I bought ‘Love Life’ by Ray Kluun. 16 hours of flight I could not sleep nor put it down, I absolutely loved that book. I read the last pages waiting for the luggage at the belt in Taipei and as soon as it was finished I started it again. It is the story of a couple, they are rich, beautiful, successful, they have a one year old child, and from one day to another they get thrown into a roller coaster as she gets diagnosed with a very aggressive form of breast cancer. It is the husband who writes it after her death. There is something fresh and innocent in the way he describes his experience, his infidelities, how he grew through this experience, from a ‘spoilt kid’, running away from the pain and from himself, to a mature man that could at the end give himself totally to his wife. I was also touched by how she came to accept the imminent death and faced it with dignity and something that felt almost like gratitude This book has stayed under my skin for two weeks. It is not only touching, it is fun too. I am looking forward to the sequel.
And now I just finished ‘The Untouched Key’ by Alice Miller. It is not the one I liked the most , however she is always great. I think everybody should read something of her. Her books are an eye-opener about childhood, parental conditioning, education.
I know there are more books I read, including the one written by my ex school mate, Silvia but now it is getting late, I’d better go to sleep. I will talk about more books next time. Once again I wrote a long one. I will really try to write more often and keep it short.
So…..see you soon….
With love.
Shakura