Island Twenty-Four Isle of the Travelling Hybrids

(Extract from: Muse of the Long Haul Thirty-One Isles of the Creative Imagination)
Copyright, Dr Ian Irvine, 2013 all rights reserved. All short extracts from the texts discussed are acknowledged and used under fair usage related to review and theoretical critique contained in international copyright law.

Cover image: Marco Polo in a tartar outfit age and author unknown. This image is in the public domain. All other images (in order): Domestic Kali, Kathmandu, Spirit Houses Lake Toba, Sumatra and Borobodur during the Fires by Sue King-Smith 1997, The last image Hoi An Lanterns is by Ian Irvine, 2007.

Publisher: Mercurius Press, Australia, 2013. NB: This piece is published at Scribd as part of a series drawn from the soon to be print published non-fiction book on experiential poetics entitled: Muse of the Long Haul: Thirty-One Isles of the Creative Imagination.

Island Twenty-Four Isle of the Travelling Hybrids

I read Italo Calvinos novel Invisible Cities in 1992 for a third year literature class at La Trobe taught by John Penwill. I recall I saw it as a short, puzzling and wonderfully poetic book. The main themes are announced in the opening pages as the narrator describes Kublai Khan listening attentively to the young Venetian explorer Marco Polo describe the many cities he had visited on his travels. We are told that at the height of Khans triumphi.e. the height of his Empires powerhe is experiencing a melancholy epiphany: It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin ... After reading the opening pages I prepared myself for a Realist novel with historical elementsi.e. a fictionalised version of Polos travels which included an early meeting with Khan in the emperors summer palace at Shangdu near modern day Zhangjikou around 1274. He was only three years into what turned out to be a twenty-four year trip that took him and his father and uncle to remote parts of China, Singapore, Sumatra, Persia and so on. Calvino, however, was more interested in the metaphoric value of Polos travels and seems to make an argument for the ultimate impotence of power (symbolised by Khans only nominal power over an Empire he would never really be able to understand). In a tutorial for the class I recall a fellow student, a nineteen year old girl with frizzy dark hair, telling the tutor, Look, I suppose theres something postmodern going on ... with, like, language ... but, like, I dunno know what, I just dont get it ... As she spoke her hands flapped about in the air as though she were drowning. I have to admit, at the time I empathised with her sentiments, and though the tutor did his best to patiently explain the postmodern mysteries of Invisible Cities via the theory-speak of Saussure, Derrida and friends, I ended up feeling just as frustrated as the frizzy haired girl. My frustration however was partly due to creative despair. If this was an archetypal postmodern novel finely tuned to the historical moment (and heavily influenced, I found out only later, by Oulipean writing techniques) I felt I had no hope in hell of adapting its techniques to my own fiction. I came away with the mistaken belief that every postmodern novel was more or less formally unique (and thus original in its technical innovations). I maintained this belief until 2000 or so when I read Brian McHales excellent book Postmodernist Fictiona critical study of postmodernist literary techniques founded on the notion that the major shift from Modernist to Postmodernist literature involved a shift from the question of What can we know about the world? (an epistemological question, in terms of traditional philosophy,) to What world is this? (an ontological question). McHales book catalogues the many innovative postmodern writing techniques that have been used to explore his second, for him epoch making, question. Retrospectively, I realised that McHale was saying that postmodernist novelists (and their adventurous readers) were deliberately placing themselves in a place between worlds, an interzone (i.e. William Burroughs) or just plain Zone (i.e. Thomas Pynchon in Gravitys Rainbow)a place where one reality or paradigm clashes with another. McHale was also saying that travellers between paradigms, i.e. occupants of the Zone/interstitium, experience something called ontological flicker. One moment the world makes sense according to Paradigm A, the next moment Paradigm B or C makes more sense. For some reason the postmodernist aesthetic favours writers and thinkers willing to countenance a psychic life founded on degrees of hybridityi.e. writers willing to occupy the precarious zone between clashing ontologies.

A question arose as to why postmodernist writers would want to put themselves in such a placerather than, for example, writing from the secure centre of a particular paradigm or version of reality? The answer was obvious enough to mepost-World War II the human species developed weapons capable of destroying all life on earth. A nuclear holocaust would most likely occur due to clashes between political blocks espousing exclusivist versions of reality. The postmodernist creative solution, one aimed squarely at the goal of species survival, was to dissolve the foundations of all exclusivist paradigms thus undermining their social and political power. With this realisation, and armed with McHales book, I began to understand the link between a range of previously enigmatic post-modern writing techniques and post-modern culture and society. To return to Invisible Cities, for a moment, specifically the relationship between Khan and Polo. Khan sits in his summer palace at the centre of the Mongol Empire (metaphorically: at the centre of a paradigm or version of reality hed like to see as universalist) listening to Marco Polo. Polo, howeverever the merchant traveller, in short: a creature of the interstitium (or zone between political blocks)espouses an expansive vision of the world for he has seen/will see many landscapes, cities, Empires, etc. (metaphorically: many paradigms and versions of reality). It is no surprise then to learn that the cities Calvino wants Polo to describe are as much the cities of the mind as they are the cities Polo likely visited on his travels. For example, we are told that Isidora is a City of Dreams (p.8) and that Zaira is a city consisting of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past (p.10). We also encounter, Anastasia, a city that awakens desires one at a time, only to force you to stifle them ... as well Tamara, a city that says everything you must think and makes you repeat her discourse. We encounter these strange unreal cities throughout the book and are made to understand that something more is at stake than descriptions of different geographies. Polos cities are metaphors for deeper problems, puzzles and questions related to the ontological foundations of experience. We note also that many of the cities Polo describes are impossible cities, at least from the perspective of modern scientific paradigms. For me, three consequences accompanied these realisations: 1) I became more positive about postmodernist literary innovations. The ontological flicker encountered when reading many post-modernist novels symbolised an invitation to readers to become anti-authoritarian, tolerant and internationalist hybrids (i.e. citizens of the world opposed to all forms of oppression). 2) I understood the connection between my own dispersed across the planet history and certain aspects of postmodern culture as discussed above. Childhood circumstances (i.e. migration experiences) guaranteed that Id become an international hybrid due to important relationships existing across a number countries and places. 3) I began to see occasional travel to Majority World countries as a necessary facet of being a creative artist in our age since one task of the creative artist is to remain open to paradigms, ontologies, world views etc. that question, maybe even threaten our own. The Land of Promise (also known as Tir Tairngire and Emain Ablach) is a place visited by many seafarers in the old Celtic wonder stories. Mortals are attracted to this uncanny land despite its many perilsnot least of which is the difficulty of returning to family and friends after a visit. For example, in the 11th century Irish tale, The Voyage of Bran (Ir. Imram Brain), Bran and his men visit the Land of Promise but later experience problems returning to the mortal world due to differences in the way time flows in the two worlds. Another Irish Land of Promise story, one very relevant to the themes of this chapter, is The Conception of Mongan (also in the 11th century manuscript containing Imram Brain). The narration details the childhood of King

Mongan, who is taken by his father, the Sea-God Manannan mac Lir, from Caintigern, his mortal mother, just three days after his birth. Manannan forces Mongan to grow up in the Land of Promise (an Island) where he is taught mystical knowledgethe ability to shape-shift is mentionedwhilst he grows up. Everything works out well in the endthough for a time Mongan is homesick for his mother(land). I empathise with Mongan since his story maps aspects of my own experience after we boarded an airliner at Heathrow in 1971it was bound for Sydney, Australia and I was seven years old. As a young person I found the psychic fragmentation associated with my migrant childhood difficult to processonly in recent years have I come to realise that there have also been benefits to such a childhoodmostly related to the enrichment of my imagination and understanding of the world due to the places I have visited or lived in. Like Mongan, I have been many years away in my own particular Tir Tairngire, or Land of Promise. Also like Mongan, my years on various Islands have largely been years of learningthough my apprenticeship did not involve training to become a shape-shifter! Over the last quarter century Ive reached a kind of agreement with the traveller/ wanderer self I had to embrace as a child. Ive lived in Central Victoria, Australia, since 1987 but have travelled at regular intervals since then. Some people spend their extra cash on cigarettes, gambling, a new car every year or two, etc. whereas Sue and I tend to spend it on travel. Often we travel to see family living interstate or overseas, other times we travel as creative artistsi.e. we actively seek out the uncomfortable places between cultures/paradigms/realities that might assist us to grow as writers (and people). Unconsciously, weve probably been enacting the kind of postmodern poetic of hybridity discussed above. Of course people can easily travel in ways that do not provoke the kind of ontological flicker discussed earlier (for example, living in expensive Western hotels on visits to Majority World countries kills any chance of a Zonal experience such as I am advocating here). Many forces conspire these days, to seduce Westerners into consuming travel like they do every other commodity. Sue is probably the more adventurous traveller of the two of us and since 1993 weve visited a number of countries I probably wouldnt have visited without her encouragement. Three longer trips stand out. The first was to Indonesia in 1993 (which also took us to the UK, the US and New Zealand over a four month period). The second in 1997, also a four month trip, started in Bali then proceeded through Java, Sumatra, Malaysia and Thailand (by bus, train and ferry) before concluding, after a short flight, with six weeks in

Nepal. The third trip was to North Vietnam for five weeks in 2007this time with Kara and Caleb in tow. All of these trips were life-changing and certainly inspired me creatively. This is because they expanded and, at times, threatened my habitual, Western, perspective on life. It is worth noting the impact of these travel experiences on my writing since 1993. In particular, I wrote many poems whilst travelling. For example, travel inspired the Indonesian Sequence (1994 and 1997) and The Vietnamese Sequence (2007). More recently (2010), I wrote a number of poems whilst visiting the American South-West (where Sues father lives). The same year, on a trip back to the UK I wrote a number of poems on visits to North Wales (especially the Isle of Mona and Mount Snowdon) and the country around Stonehenge and Avebury (Southern England). A two week trip to the South Island of New Zealand in 2011 also produced a batch of poems. Since 2006 Ive only written poetic travel diary entries (i.e. I avoid prose entries). As this book testifies, Ive also had a long-term interest in immanent spiritual traditions from around the worldparticularly animistic and polytheistic traditions. However, it was only after travelling that the book knowledge came alive to me. For example, when Sue and I backpacked around Indonesia in 1993 we visited a traditional Balian, or Balinese shamana profoundly interesting and unnerving experience since he managed to summarise (through a translator) the previous ten years of my life in five minutes! Whilst in Indonesia we bought rare books on indigenous Balinese, Javanese and Sumatran religionsthese books were grounded in the experiences we were having. Similarly, when we backpacked through Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Nepal in 1997, we sought out people and places relevant to our interest in indigenous spiritual beliefsfor example, I will never forget the eerie spirit houses built for the dead by the people living around Lake Toba in Sumatra (see image above). In January 2007 I returned to the UK to visit and introduce my oldest daughter, Lena, to family in Wales, Yorkshire and Scotland. In particular I wanted to catch up with my two brothers and my gran. The trip was profoundly emotionaleveryone had aged, including myself. Where had all the years gone? In Imram Brain, of course, the sailors return to Ireland only to find that everything theyd known had changed or crumbled to dust. Nechtan, one of the homesick sailors, disobeys the counsel of Brans female lover on Emain Ablach, i.e. to not touch the land after arriving back in Ireland. Nechtan is immediately turned to dust. Bran and the rest of the crew follow the womans counsel and leave. Im still not sure whether Im Nechtan or Bran. There was a moment in Guisborough when my daughter and I were helping my Gran, Kath Hobson, cross a laneway to get into our hire-car. She felt so frail and unsteady in my arms that for a moment I felt all the immense sadness of our years away. A lump came into my throat and my eyes wateredwe were on the way up to the old farmhouse where she wanted to show us where my Grandfathers ashes had been scattered.

The only problem was that when we reached the farm her memory failed and she was unable to direct us to the site. In that moment, with my grandmother quite upset that she couldnt remember something so important to her, I could have turned to dust myself. I was still thinking about the UK trip five months later during a five week family holiday to Vietnam. On the flight home, specifically 34,000 feet above Malaysia, it struck me that though Ive had a life time of involuntary travel, this fact had provided me with opportunities and experiences very relevant to the life of a creative artist. Indeed, after meeting a number of well known Vietnamese poets and writers in Hoi An (see image) whod been finding it difficult to travel abroad to meet writers etc. for a range of issues, I felt extremely fortunate that Sue and I were able to travel pretty much whenever we wished. It was time to accept, maybe even celebrate, intercontinental hybridity as a fundamental part of my identity. Like my parents, Ive ended up basing myself in Australia (the familys original Land of Promise). This is a rational decision, since all of my children live here or in neighbouring New Zealand. I like the fact that they are close to their grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles etc. (though they have British aunts and uncles and US grandparents they dont get to see much). Returning to the UK, at this point in my life, would separate my children from most of their extended familyas well as from their own long-term friends. Like Mongan and Bran then, I have to make the best of the problematic fate imposed upon travellers. Conclusion Ogham and the Hybrid Self My travels, voluntary and involuntary, have given me an internationalist perspective on the modern world. Such a perspective is, I believe, essential to creative thinkers in our postmodern era. In my case this has been an accident of migration to some extent (i.e. the involuntary aspect). After 1992, however, Sue and I travelled to countries that challenged, sometimes even threatened, our Western reality paradigms and there were many creative benefits to this voluntary form of travel (despite occasional discomforts such as robbery, rabid dogs, statutes imbued with black magic and dangerous fevers!). If fortunate enough to possess a reasonable income Id recommend international travel to non-Western countries to any creative person especially travel that tests belief systems acquired through Western enculturation. Flying at 1,000 kilometres per hour above Malaysia back in 2007, I realised that Id partially sublimated the absence associated with migration into a life-long interest in literature, history, philosophy, creative writing, etc. As it turned out this sublimation process eventually gave me, quite by accident, a vocation. Perhaps I am the homesick Monganforced to learn the great mysteries on a haunted island. Or maybe Im the traveller Branas he watched his men throw ogham sticksengraved with stories and poemsat the Ireland they could not return to. In the throwing we discern a creative gesturea gesture full of melancholy longing, but also learnedness, since with it they acknowledged both the sacrifices and the treasures associated with their travel induced hybridity.

Author Bio (as at June 2013)

Dr. Ian Irvine (Hobson) is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, writer and non-fiction writer. His work has featured in publications as diverse as Humanitas (USA), The Antigonish Review (Canada), Tears in the Fence (UK), Linq (Australia) and Takahe (NZ), as well as in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies: Best Australian Poems 2005 (Black Ink Books) and Agenda: Australian Edition, 2005. He is the author of three books and co-editor of three journals and currently teaches in the Professional Writing and Editing program at BRIT (Bendigo, Australia) as well as the same program at Victoria University, St. Albans, Melbourne. He has also taught history and social theory at La Trobe University (Bendigo, Australia) and holds a PhD for his work on creative, normative and dysfunctional forms of alienation and morbid ennui.