vrijdag 26 juni 2009

Travelling Malaysia

Now travelling for almost a month in Malaysia and Singapore I miss my bamboo flutes a lot. They smell like 'wood' they feel comfortable to the touch, they play nice. I feel that a bamboo shak has a total different feel, aura or 'energy' then one made of non-bamboo material. So a few days and I'll be able to play my Seikado, the raw Mujitsu or my rather newly acquired Gykosui, with wich I am most content. Nonetheless I have been playing some shakuhachi over here as I took my plastic -nasty word- Yuu. It plays everything well and nice but lacks some spirit to me. But without it I wouldn't have been able to take one along after all. I could do it...the humidity is quite high here (85%) and bamboo originates as well and grows very well in this climate. But the traveling by air with a shakuhachi...I dunno...
When home I'll post some more of my small shak adventures in this nice country with friendly people!

zondag 14 juni 2009

Mindfullness all the way



Now being on vacation I type this in Taman Negara, well the small town besides the big ancient 130-milion year old jungle called Taman Negara. Earlier in another jungle -Malaysia has more then only jungles- on a track walking the Cameron Highlands I slipped and injured my foot at the ankle...I have somewhat weak ankles perhaps, but you forget that in a normal situation when you don't do anything challenging with them. Well it happened -fortunately not too severe- I could walk on, for 3 hours! But now much more mindfull of where I walked and how my body and feet felt not to slip again. It was like a cripple in the jungle! Well I made it, but was surprised what the concentration I needed for walking and climbing back, also to notice how tiresome it was. Today I walked another jungle with bandage to fortify it all and it went good, walked the long cannopy walkway and crossed for 4 hours through this old forrest. I made a film playing in front of a big bamboo plant wich I intend to add later (the film)...