Will the real Jason Blackman please stand up?

An important stop on the Greatest Hits Tour was a visit with a wonderful man whom I often refer to as my spiritual guide.  Jason Blackman stepped into my life five years ago and sort of kicked off a mini-spiritual revolution.  Of course, he had no idea that was what he was doing at the time.  Having spent many years in Thailand, his intention was simply to give me some honest advice before I headed off to teach English in Bangkok.  The nature of his advice, it turned out, was quite profound.  He had a strong intuitive sense about what I really needed to hear at that moment.  He did not tell me to buy a King Shirt and to properly wai my work colleagues.  He gave me soul advice without knowing me at all.  All of this happened over a long distance phone call that he initiated, again, out of graceful intuition.  He was in London and I was in The Debo.  We were ships passing in the night:  on the day after that conversation, he landed at Detroit Metro Airport almost at the exact same time that I was departing for Southeast Asia. 

Every last detail of this interaction struck me as extraordinarily meaningful, and there blossomed the spiritual guide-hood of Jason Blackman.

I suppose it is important to note that I had been put in touch with Jason through the woman who baptized me into the world of yoga.  Micha Adams (now the operator of The Detroit Flyhouse) taught my second or third yoga class of all time.  It had been one hell of a tough day for me.  At the time, my dad’s health was quite precarious and my relationship with him was even more so.  When I left the heaviness of Grand Central Skinner, I went to a workplace where I dealt with broken collar bones, angst, hyperactivity, and irresponsibility of teenagers in the blazing Detroit summer sun.  And, although it had been nearly a year since I returned from southern Africa, life in the good ole US of A still felt a bit weird.  In essence, I was stressed.  With all of that swirling in my emotional world, in that first class I had with Micha, in my introductory days to yoga, I cried.  And, cried.  And, cried some more.  And, just when I thought the tears might have dried up, we did some hip openers and my tears flowed on.  In the final relaxation pose, Micha came to me and massaged my feet with some sort of peppermint-y lotion.  Baptism.  From that moment on, I have been (and forever will be) enamored with Micha and with yoga.  To this day, I think of her as my gold standard of yoga teachers.

So, really, Jason was meaningful to me before I even clicked ‘send’ on that first email.

Jason and I maintained sporadic contact after that first fateful conversation, usually at the most appropriate of times.  It was Jason who suggested that we use the excerpt from Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet as one of the readings at my dad’s funeral.  And, it was Jason that contacted me out of the blue on what was one of my bluest days in Arequipa – when my heart was bruised and battered on my messy emotional floor.  As we have both led nomadic lifestyles, we continued to crisscross the globe with the uncanny ability to just barely miss each other.  Interestingly, the first time I met Jason in person was at a 10 day silent meditation retreat.  While I have always been completely certain that The Universe brought Jason into my life with a precise, divine intention, I have often marveled at how The Universe also seemed insistent that we not actually see each other. 

On the Greatest Hits Tour, however, Jason Blackman quality time became a reality.  This seemed like great timing to see someone who I consider my spiritual guide.  And, obviously, I rank Jason on my life greatest hits list.  He is currently based in Phuket, which was to be my first stop in Thailand.  So, after Sumi returned to Singapore, Anna Costley and I went on Mission: Jason Blackman. 

As I have mentioned in a previous post, Anna Costley’s incorporation into the Greatest Hits Tour was quite divine, too.  Her presence for the Jason Blackman nights only took the divinity up a notch.  Anna is a person with whom I deeply enjoy discussing spirituality.  And, she has a deep appreciation for meeting new and interesting characters.

So, the highlight of our visit to Jason Blackman was the moment when he told Anna that she is a witch.

  

I believe her initial response to this was, “Mmmm, no, I am not.”  However, after a bit of discussion, I think we may have reached consensus that Anna is, indeed, a witch.  He was not saying that she is a nasty person, replacing the ‘b’ with a ‘w’ to make the blow a bit less harsh.  He also was not referring to her potential possession of a subversive cauldron and a black pointy hat (though she does seem to have an unusual fascination with toads).  What he was saying was that she has a special spiritual force in her.  She can tap into something that is not as accessible to all of us.  That is pretty cool.

So, if Anna were to rock up to Munchkinland, she would be able to proudly report that she is a good witch, not a bad witch.

Our 48 hours with Jason Blackman included further conversations with similar content.  However, we spoke mostly about Jason’s recent brush with death.  He contracted a super crazy illness, interpreted by my medical naivety as a hardcore brain infection.  He was in a coma for two weeks, and, two months later, he is still very much in a state of recovery – physically, mentally, emotionally.  It is a miracle that he is still alive.  His resilience, I feel, is equally miraculous.

Throughout our stay, Jason was quite apologetic about not being able to give more of ‘himself’ to us.  He was feeling very much not ‘himself’, and it seemed he was disappointed that he couldn’t share that self that he knows best.  I, however, thought it was an understated divine gift to me.  In the last year or two, I have been subtly shifting and changing.  I have often come up against those changes and freaked out with the following mental self-interrogation:  “My God, this is very un-Anna Skinner of you.  What is wrong with you?  Why don’t you want to do that?  That is the sort of thing you do.  Why aren’t you doing it now?  What has happened to you?  I REPEAT, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU???”  Jason’s scenario of a real, dramatic shift in self – a feeling of a foreign body and mind – made me aware that it is totally normal to shift and change in each of our lifetimes, whether or not it has been triggered by a traumatic experience.  It was easy not to judge Jason’s evolution because he had just gone through a massive life event.  Of course he would be facing a new sense of self!  Although my slight changes have not been the consequence of a trauma, they are still completely natural.  If I can embrace the changes of a friend, I should certainly embrace my own evolution.  I was reminded that an attachment to a particular Anna Skinner identity does not actually serve me.  That is all just some weird ego stuff.  We change.  In fact, in this same visit, a different amazing man told me that “the only thing that doesn’t change is change.”  

As we shift individually, we can count on the evolution of our relationships as well.  From the time we had the conversation that got my spiritual ball rolling five years ago, I have looked at my relationship with Jason as that of teacher/student.  With every Jason interaction, I grew to expect him to give me some divine nugget of wisdom.  While I still believe I have much to learn from Jason, I think there is some shit I need to work out for myself.  More importantly, this expectation of wisdom delivery is actually a lot of pressure to put on a person.  If someone expected me to dispense meaningful life lessons every time I saw him/her, I would feel super stressed out.  This visit made me aware of my attachment to this idea of Jason The Teacher and our way of relating in that context.  If our relationships are constantly shifting and growing, attachments to particular dynamics like this are not very useful.         

In conclusion, Jason is changing.  I am changing.  Our relationship is changing.  Even Anna’s witchy-ness is changing. Because that’s what everything does -- change.   And, if everything is changing, those attachments I have mentioned definitely are not helpful.  After all, we know what Buddha says about attachments:  they lead straight to a world of suffering.  So, peace out to those attachments.  Ain’t nobody got time for that!

I will, however, always have time for Jason Blackman, regardless of how he transforms or how our connection evolves.

Girl Talk (and No Talk)

There are three major objectives to Anna’s Greatest Hits Tour:  1. Reunite with dear friends in significant environments.  2.  Create space for inner/spiritual exploration.  3.  Visit places that I have long thought of as intriguing. 

I had heaps of friend time in New Zealand and Australia.  I had some new horizon exploration in Java.  Then, I had some quality New Age Anna time in Bali.  So, it was time to loop back to objective number one with my visit to Singapore.  Girlfriend time!

Truth be told, Singapore has never really captured my imagination.  In fact, in a highly uncharacteristic act, I completely skipped a flight to the country four years ago when I decided I was having too much of a good time in Southeast Asia’s grittier zones.  However, as more people I love have visited and settled there, I have found myself quite fascinated by this orderly city and its ban on chewing gum. 

I would have rocked up to Singapore if I found it totally uninteresting, though.  It didn’t matter where I was heading because I would be hanging out with Sumin Ahn and Anna Costley.  I was certain we would have a grand time just about anywhere.

Anna and Sumi are friends from New Zealand.  I met them through one of the people I am most obsessed with in the world – Elinor Chisholm.  Actually, it was Eli that really introduced me to (or is in some way connected to) the best of my kiwi world.  Anna and Sumi are no exception.

Sumi and her wonderful fiancé, Ben, have been living and working in Singapore for two years, so our reunion was straightforward.  However, it was divine intervention that came into play with the intersecting visit of Anna Costley.  We realized our similar timeframes during my trip to New Zealand and almost immediately committed to a joint Singapore visit and Thailand beach bum experience. 

After a decent bit of alone time in Bali, chatting and chatting and debriefing and pre-briefing and laughing and laughing and laughing with two women that I already understand to be ‘on my page’ was so wonderfully luxurious.  I was in the Four Seasons of social stimulation.

And, get this:   As if a gift from the girlfriend socializing gods, in these initial days of reuniting and sharing, I also had a date arranged to see my ex-boyfriend (for the first time in two years) as well as meet his new, serious girlfriend.  Now, that is one glorious goldmine of girl talk.

I cannot overstate the greatness of spending uninterrupted quality time with two amazing women who are so willing to share with deep honesty and ridiculous humor.  Emotional intimacy and unfiltered humor bring me to life.  One of the things that I find most nourishing is a sense of connection, so this girlfriend time made me feel plugged right into The Universe. 

Great credit to the patient photographer, Ben, who tried and tried to capture a clear photo of the cackling trio

…but, I won’t bang on further with clichés about friendships, specifically those between women.  I am sure you get the point.

What I might bang on about a bit more is something slightly less cliché – the beauty of shared solitude.  After a few days of Singapore’s equatorial heat and air-conditioned shopping malls, Sumi, Anna, and I headed to Phuket, Thailand.  We were such motor-mouths – we couldn’t even shut up for 30 seconds on the plane ride.  We were quite aware of this, too, wondering if the people around us wanted to join our fun or tell us to take our party elsewhere.  Like I said, this banter and sharing was brilliant, but when Sumi left us, Anna and I began to settle into a quieter existence.  Oh, we still had our fair share of giggle fits and exchanges of life stories and speculative analyses of the people around us.  However, we also spent a lot of time in each other’s presence without speaking or joking.  We spent nine nights on Ko Lanta (a Thai island off the Andaman coast), and much of that time we were silent.  We read.  We wrote.  We stared at the sea.  We generally did this while sitting on the same amazing bungalow balcony.  We were two Annas together, but we were also in our free, independent Anna worlds.

So, while I cherish the uproarious moments, I also cherish the ability to be in the presence of a dear friend and feel just as comfortable and grateful for her silence.  Relationships become so much richer when we understand each other in multi-dimensional ways.  I feel lucky to have had the time and space to know Anna both in the dimension of her speech and the dimension of her silence.  

Team Anna Headquarters -- bungalow in Ko Lanta 

The view from our porch

My Island Retreat (Minus the Beach)

It’s my last day in Ubud, and it feels a bit like I am leaving a rehab centre, preparing to face the real world.

Of course, I have no idea what ‘the real world’ is.  I am certain, though, that it is not lying on a beach in Thailaind with two wonderful friends.  And, that’s where I am headed next. 

Still, I have spent 15 nights in a glorious bubble of peace and growth and healing.  I am leaving the bubble, and while the beaches of Thailand won’t be tough, there will surely be challenges beyond the Southeast Asia shores.  So, I feel a tinge of fear/preemptive anxiety over the loss of this feeling of peace and contentment.

…which, perhaps, means I am not in as much of a state of glorious equanimity after all? I will have to ponder that one further on my own…

A girl moved into the room next to mine yesterday.  When I told her that I had been here for two weeks, she responded with the sort of surprise I would have expected if I had told her I had been living here for two years.  She then said, “well, you will have to tell me about everything that I should do while I am in town.  You must be an expert.”

My response, “Well, the thing is, I haven’t really done anything.  But, if you would like me to tell you about how to not do anything in Ubud, I’m your girl.”

While I told that girl that I did nothing, I was speaking strictly in terms of the typical tourist activities.  I did so much to develop my yoga and meditation practices.  I had conversations over delicious, healthy food that opened my eyes to new ways of seeing myself and the way I operate in this world.  I went for walks.  I watched the rain.  I drank coconuts and talked with Ibu (the mother of the house).  My days felt rich and full and had just the right amount of purpose.  It was my sweet little Anna Skinner economy style retreat.  

I have been really into ‘retreating’ since I was a teenager.  Obviously, I love going away – getting out of an environment familiar to me.  I love focusing on a particular task/mission for a short period of time.  I love building a sense of community rapidly with people in this unfamiliar environment who are also focusing on a similar task.  I love closing the getaway with a feeling of connection and accomplishment and growth.

This time in Ubud has been a really special sort of retreat because I designed it myself without really designing anything at all.  There was no conference centre with dorm beds.  There was no opening night ceremony speech.  There was no schedule of daily activities or cafeteria lunch.  There weren't even any other participants!  There was just me, my thoughts, my yoga practice, my lovely little group of Bali friends, and my banana pancake and fruit salad every morning.

Dictionary.com tells me that the antonym for ‘retreat’ is ‘advance’.  When I first read this, I thought it was only applicable to the military sense of the word, and I was momentarily frustrated with the lack of vocabulary I had for post-retreat life.  After repeating the word a few times in my head, I realized that ‘advance’ was actually spectacularly appropriate.  I just retreated – withdrew from everyday life and even the classic tourist trail – in an effort to advance my life in the days that follow.  With all the wisdom of my silence and all the wisdom of the kind and fascinating folks I befriended in Ubud, I feel I am indeed ready to move forward.  And, so, as I have composed this post, I have laid my real world anxiety to rest, knowing that I will continue to advance until the next time I feel the need for a nourishing retreat.