LOOKING FORWARD TO NEW HORIZONS & BIDDING FAREWELL TO 2012

It’s been more than two weeks since I flew back from Southeast Asia to Toronto, and that same amount of time since I posted a blogpost. Disgraceful, you might well say. I enjoy writing here, thinking on the page, so to speak. So what is it that’s caused this lacuna? I ask myself.

There are the obvious reasons: jetlag and disorientation after the flights from Rangoon via Bangkok etc, and the busy-ness of seeing friends after a travel gap, with the added intensity and expectations that come during the Christmas season.

But it felt like there was more to it. I think I was more wrecked by the whirlwind of book tour than I was prepared to acknowledge. I’m not complaining, especially not after having had the chance to recharge in Chiang Mai, but somehow the deep tiredness, more emotional than physical, continued long after and left me empty of initiative for ideas. I displaced my energies into baking and cooking and seeing friends, but could never quite feel the deep juiciness that I love to feel when I sit down to write here.

And now at last that richer energy is back, as of two or three days ago. I rejoice.

On this last day of the year that marks a dozen years since 2000, that’s been a leap-year/election year and a year that for me was all about the BURMA book, I’m feeling mighty grateful to be alive and in good health, with projects to look forward to and friends to rejoice with.

The holidays have been multi-layered. In our house we don’t have any particular holiday ritual. The only rule is that no-one gets imposed upon, in fact basically the only rule is that there are no rules. It makes things very relaxed, somewhat shapeless, and very pleasurable. 

This year we ate a huge meal with friends, family-style, on Chrstmas evening, beginning with PEI oysters and some extraordinary shrimp, moving on to a Berkshire pork rib roast with brilliant crackling, as well as several Burmese salads (the grapefruit salad was especially delish with the pork), and then following up with a choice of sweets that included mince tarts and pumpkin pie, as well as home-made chestnut ice cream. Are you having indigestion reading this list? I am.  

And all week we’ve been snacking on various biscotti, made from my recipes in HomeBaking. Cooking was part of my way of dealing with patchy tiredness from jetlag. I made jars of mincemeat a week ago, using homemade candied peel, suet, currants, sultanas, chopped apple, lemon and orange zest and juice, and a good splash of brandy. Some went into the mince tarts, some has gone as presents, but I have to confess that there’s one open jar in the fridge that I dip into every once in a while - with a clean spoon, I swear - to take a lovely rich and intense mouthful. It’s like an over-the-top version of the classic scoop-a-finger-into-the-peanut butter jar, and to me way more tempting and delicious.

So it is that most of us emerge into 2013 having to loosen our belts and opt for those less-fitted garments that allow us to breath easily. The wonderful sereendipitous ski that I had in the city a few days ago, up ravines etc, after our huge snowfall last Wednesday-Thursday, was not enough to work off all this indulgence, nor was the fabulous dancing we all did last night. 

But so what? It’s not worth worrying about weight and tight clothing. Life is too short to focus on such trivial “first world problems”. I prefer to turn my imagination to wider less me-centred horizons, those which beckon endlessly, and remind me that the world is an infinitely fascinating place, where people of all kinds face intractable problems and conflicts and try to do so with courage and dignity. 

So I’ll close with a wish. Sorry if it seems preachy or pretentious, for it’s heartfelt: May this coming year bring more justice and more peace: more negotiation and less conflict, more respect and less arrogance, to us all.

SENDING LIGHT AND HOPE UP INTO THE DARK

This evening here in Chiang Mai a bunch of us sent light up into the dark. What am I saying? you ask. Well there's an amazing phenomenon here, a kind of cross between a balloon and a firecracker, that you can buy to celebrate an event or just for fun. It's made of paper, a large sack like a balloon nearly four feet in diameter, but with an opening below it. Underneath hangs a paraffin lamp. You light the lamp, holding the paper globe away from the flame and over it. The hot air from the flame fills the ballooning paper, inflates it, and then eventually lifts it into the air, where it floats upward.

Some days here there are a lot of these being launched, other days there's the occasional one or two drifting in the night sky.

Gary and Trish had bought the lantern, shaped like a monkey's face, to honour the baby daughter than Boom and Jayan had four months ago. We were all there, lighting the lantern or watching, The baby was happy and oblivious of the fuss. Once the paraffin was lit, we stood there holding the paper away from the flame and waiting for the hot air to inflate it. In that slightly anxioous moment the moneky's face seemed to leer at our hopefulness. (Of course there's the idea that if it inflates and floats well up into the sky, it's a harbinger of good luck; a failure to rise up is the reverse, so there is a little tension around these lightings.)

Finally we let the lantern go, and up it floated, brilliantly light against the dark sky, the growing crescent moon the only decor. It floated over toward the apartment building and seemed to hover, hesitantly. Argh! Would it get caught on a balcony? Surely not! Would it rise up over and beyond the building? Perhaps? And yet? Eventually, after some heart in mouth moments, it drifted up onto the rroof and then on up into the midnight blue sky from there.

So she's well launched, this lovely baby!

All this light and fire in the dark comes just three weeks after another time of light in the dark in Chiang Mai, this one Loy Kratong. Chiang Mai is a big place for Loy Kratong, a festival of lights at the full moon in November. A kratong is traditionally a small leaf raft with a candle on it. Now you can buy elaborate kratongs of course, but at its origin it's a simple candle on a leaf Each person launches a kratong, sets it floating down a stream or river. Bad deeds and bad luck float down the river on the little raft, freeing each of us. It's a lovely concept, and a relief too.

Now what are we going to do with this freedom?

Talking today with Tiger, a man in his eighties who settled here in Chiang Mai about twenty years ago, I was reminded of how differently each of us engage with the world and with the future. Tiger set off from the UK, after retiring in his fifties, to travel and engage with the world. He didn't have a plan. Eventually, a good ten years later, he settled here in Chiang Mai. But he started out with the confidence that he'd find his way, and also with the urge to be surprised, to not-know and to find out and trust to luck that what was coming next would be interesting.

Another approach at retirement or even any time in life, is to try to make sure, to tie things down and aim for certainty. I sort of understand that urge for security, the wish to have a sure outcome. But how uninteresting, too. If the future consists only of what I have planned for it, then it's llimited to what I can imagine, and that's so puny compared to all the possibilities the world has to offer (possibilties good and bad, yes, I agree, but wonderfully unknown and infinite).

So when we launch a little raft with a candle on it, or send a fire-powered paper lantern up into the dark sky, we're gambling and hoping, launching ourselves metaphorically into the future, eyes open, hope surging, fingers crossed, that the light will float on upward and that we will have good luck and find our way.