Thursday 10 January 2013

I dont feel comfortable here

I wonder it if it only about the temperature and the humidity or whether there is something more fundamental making me uncomfortable. I find it interesting that normally I am very face focused (to an extent I hadnt previously recognised) but here for 50% of the female population I am fixated on seeing/looking at endlessly different colours and decorated examples of muslim headwear so that I seldom focus on the face. It is the detail of what is around the face that I am seeing. I feel there are holes in that connection experience and the shape of that hole is the oval of the face. That a little more english was spoken here than in Russia in some ways made it more difficult because I was never sure whether to start a conversation. But I realised shallow superficial conversations are so unfulfilling, so tedious and so distracting. Of course, most foreign tourists regardless of their nationality had some english. But seldom was the level adequate for even complex directions to another tourist site. At least in Russia I had no expectations very quickly. I feel there is little intellectual subtance to be gained here. Nothing uplifts me visually or spiritually. A couple of food moments are not enough. I feel a need to go somewhere whre I have cultural connections or a huge familiarity through education and understand in advance there will be potential to be excited. I feel deadened by this experience. Yes I have learnt about different cultures/peoples but nothing I have learnt has given me some sort of leap into a new way of seeing or understanding the world. It has helped me to understand my need for physical comfort, space, intellectual arousal, the world of ideas. But often I have thought a week in the garden would have made me happier. What I do with my life (married/not married; kids/no kids) is not of interest to me (but has been the topic of interest about me here in Malaysia) rather it is notions, beliefs, words, meanings that enthrall me.

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