White Fella Awakening

By Ian M. Johnson

An exciting, intriguing, confronting, loving and lustful true story of a young man's search for comfort, relief and answers to his deep spiritual knowing within his soul. With willful abandonment his travels left him lost at a crossroads wondering what the purpose of his life actually was. Thereafter he unexpectedly attracted the interest of the Australian Aboriginal Ancestors who turned his life upside down forcing him to acknowledge his lack of spirituality, along with facing his true feelings and emotions "head on".

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992316310

Book preview

unfolding.

Chapter 1

Stepping out of the Wave

1am, downtown Taipei. Here I was, stuck in some rundown hotel room. On the plus side its size was impressionable, but its old fashioned décor consisting of second hand furniture and tarnished, out of date wallpaper clinging precariously to its walls, gave the whole space an unenthusiastic twist. I tried to relax and ignore my new surroundings; however, the flaws and persistent smell of smoke from the 10,000 lingering souls of previous guests were influencing my imagination. I thought of all the people who had momentarily resided here and wondered if all their memories were impregnated onto the room’s veneer? I sensed they were unfortunately the negative spin of bad deals, hookers, and dare I say exploitation, seemed to overrule any nice sentiments.

Sitting opposite me was Brad, my temporary new travel companion. I wondered if our story, although not as pessimistic, seedy or extreme, was being woven into the room’s tapestry along with all the others.

Earlier that day, while waiting for my flight to leave LAX (Los Angeles Airport) I had been contacting friends on the other side of the world trying to arrange a ticket to attend some party. I could join the revelry as long as I didn’t get delayed and the pilot knew the whereabouts of Down Under (Australia). My reason for having been in the USA was my recent employment in the carton industry. My involvement in servicing and installing sophisticated printing machinery had given me a satisfying way of making a living however, the organisation of the whole operation had, you could say, driven me a little nuts. And so, I was more than keen to get home and have some cold beers with my friends. I figured that would smooth it all out. As we had taxied up to Taipei’s International Terminal, I witnessed the Flying Kangaroo on the tail of our Qantas connecting flight backing out from its parking spot and so stranding Brad, myself and two other passengers for 24 hours, I suppose it could have been worse, like being stuck in Bombay or somewhere with similar characteristics.

At that time, Brad and I had gone over to the ticket counter while the two ladies who found themselves in the same predicament, one most likely in her fifties and the other in her early twenties, had sat down on some nearby seats. The older woman caught my attention first as she wore a permanent grin and the garb of someone who had just stepped straight out of Woodstock 69. I laughed to myself as her demeanour had instantly sparked my imagination to fabricate an image of her puffing on a spliff in the airport’s toilets, straight after we had disembarked the aircraft. Her name was Stephanie. Even though she was born in the USA she had now resided in Australia for a dozen years (similar length of time as myself) and actually had been to the monumental occasion of 1969.

I found out later the other lady was called Trisha, born in Australia, married to an American soldier who was serving in Iraq and well advanced in her first pregnancy. The debacle we were all in had obviously stressed her out, which made me wonder what the effect of the bad vibes was having on her unborn baby? It turned out she had a rendezvous in Brisbane with her family who had already set off on an extensive road trip (possibly three days of driving), travelling from the top end of Far North Queensland (so I wasn’t the only one whose plans were going to the wall).

A little bit about myself. My birth place was England and one afternoon, in a typical school maths class, a seed had been sown. The dream of a new life on the other side of the planet seemed like a fantasy where the promise of adventure and regular sunshine were guaranteed. A few years into my early twenties and my dream had been realised. Fast forward a decade or more, quite a few thousand kilometres of travel and after living in several other countries, I was now beginning to wonder where my roots actually lay. I hadn’t really belonged to any particular place but at the same time I tried to fit into any culture or country I found myself in. My British identity had almost become transparent and if you were to put me into a box, world citizen or internationalist would have been more appropriate. Besides for some reason the blasé attachment to any origin made me feel more comfortable.

My attention swung to the business man called Brad. He had all the telltale signs: expensive suit; hand-made leather shoes; and Rolex wrist watch. Business class was obviously his usual mode of travel. Unfortunately this time, the fact that his ticket cost him double the price of our cattle class economy ticket, didn’t get him any closer to his destination, which shows you money can’t always buy you everything. He had finished rescheduling and so it was up to me to do the heroic thing and acquire an upgrade for the rest of us, to compensate for the airline’s stuff up (that is for not being reliable enough to get us to Taipei on time for our connecting flight to Australia). The fragile Asian airline representative wasn’t quite sure what to do with my assertiveness. I knew it wasn’t her fault we arrived late from LAX but she still had to deal with it. She picked up the phone to speak with her superior and then hung up a few moments later. Fortunately my pain in the ass attitude had paid off and the three of us were to be sitting at the front of the plane with Brad the business man on the next available flight.

The fiasco had taken us the later part of a day and into the night just to get the four of us from the airport to the hotel.

That evening the hotel staff had paired Brad and I in one room and the ladies shared another. I made a joke that they should have given us a room apiece but instead were probably going to do a shonky deal of by the hour on the other two rooms, so they could make some extra cash at the airline’s expense. I didn’t care either way because Brad and I ended up having an interesting conversation that had transpired throughout the night and into the morning.

One topic dominated; his dream business intention was to convert what he had (by all accounts around a million dollars or so) into $200 million. For me this number was way off my monetary scale, as I thought a million dollars was easily enough for any man. However, he seemed sure of his target and wanted substantially more than what he had at present. Because I had never met anyone with such a flamboyant objective it crossed my mind, after he had tried to explain what he actually did for a living, that he must be some kind of entrepreneurial genius with a twist of also having the credentials of a guru.

What he actually did to make his money was hard to nail down but in a nutshell, it seemed his expertise was talking. It entailed a knowledge transfer to people seeking something better for themselves - kind of like self-help seminars. One segment of his teaching was to divide your life into quadrants so an analysis could be made of what was missing or what areas needed improvement; be it money, relationships, family, career or goals. Once the wheel of your life was established and then scrutinised he would formulate a strategy so you could use the tool of adaptation to navigate yourself into a life of happiness and contentment.

What he had been talking about made some sense however; personally I had always considered myself as reasonably satisfied with my lot, albeit lately I knew deep down something was still missing. I was hoping he would know of this something but it didn’t get a mention in his pep talk. I wondered if this was due to its obscurity.

So far I’ve done the career and travel thing, resided in foreign lands, had serious relationships, endured separations, had a child, (actually my daughter was the only thing in my life that did make sense), however, there was still this mysterious missing piece. Although I had considered that, not being in a steady relationship with someone special could be the missing ingredient in my life, I found under scrutiny that my state of affairs had a few more variables. Firstly, I knew my evolution had become stale and so it was clear that I needed to learn a whole lot more about myself and so jumping into a relationship at this time, would be the last thing I needed. Secondly, I sensed a new alternative set of rules were waiting to jump right into my existence.

Funnily enough, before this overseas work excursion, on the morning I was due to fly out, something strange had happened. While having my breakfast a feeling of confrontation deeply traversed throughout my very being. The common saying, something came over me definitely wasn’t appropriate because this was like never before. The degree and intensity was structured in a way that it left me uncertain about my whole life. As I sat there I knew everything had come to this very moment. I had the realisation, out of all the things I had learnt throughout my life there was still a truth or something of great importance I hadn’t learnt. This something was a great mystery. It resembled starting a new significant chapter of my life and as the new page was turned over, I found my only ally was nothing but sheer trepidation.

The strangeness of this experience left me utterly perplexed but then reality kicked back in and I realised I had a plane to catch.

So after about five or more hours of listening to Brad’s acquired wisdom, I realised that his wealth, status and ambition (his global telephone number dream) didn’t project an exaggerated amount of happiness out to the world any more than my dream did. This led me to the conclusion that he hadn’t gotten any closer to the Holy Grail than I. But that was his dream, so maybe he would find it there, right after the last dollar had rolled over to the $200 million mark. Who knows? And who was I to judge?

The hotel’s restaurant opened for breakfast at 7am so I decided to get cleaned up first. I got into the shower and as the warm water relaxed my aching muscles, it had the reverse effect on my mind.

Absurd thoughts of a confidence trick spun around my head. Brad wasn’t some guru about to get his own chat show but a guy who gives his prey some fancy spiel about money and wellbeing then uses them as a mule to traffic his drugs to the Promised Land. In this case however, the mule didn’t know he was a mule, which is much worse. I wondered if Brad was going to rip me off?

Normally my mind never got so extravagant with outlandish innuendos of such grand proportions. I always gave a fair degree of trust to whoever I met, but for some reason this time just seemed different.

Once realising my travel bag had been left wide open in the other room, I cut my shower time and quickly got dried and changed. Once in the main room I frantically checked my bag, but unfortunately I wasn’t quite satisfied that it was drug free as Brad re-entered the room.

Funny thing the mind; it can dream up all kinds of things just to make you unhappy or to a worse degree, deviate, fabricate and exaggerate a situation to scare the shit out of yourself.

I sat back in one of the chairs and waited for Brad while he got ready. My bizarre drug trafficking thoughts swung from my present situation to a time in my past when I was a little naive and, dare I say, immortal (at least at the time I thought I was) but also waking up to a new global reality. I had actually moved some contraband of a different nature over two international border crossings by train.

I must ask for your forgiveness for the tale that follows meanders a little before getting to the part about the mule, the reason being, some life lessons I had learnt during that time, I believe are worth a mention.

The train was the Trans-Siberian Express. I’m not quite sure why they call it the Express because it took six days to get from Moscow to Beijing, but I suppose it was still a lot quicker than the times of Genghis Khan on horseback and without the side tracking of claiming another extension of land ownership.

During that time I had arrived in Moscow at approximately 11am from Budapest, Hungary. I had to somehow get across the city to a train station called Yaraslav, where the train left for Beijing that evening. Having only a limited amount of funds for my travels, I used the city’s underground that took me to a large station with hundreds, if not thousands of people. Quite possibly many of them trying to escape the city (and country) for the power of communism had crumbled leaving USSR broke and many of its people destitute.

Suddenly the sound of the letters and numbers of the large destination board caught my attention as they rolled over to display destinations and promises of new beginnings. Six more letters flipped over to reveal Peking, as Beijing was once called, with a departure time of 1pm. This didn’t correspond with my ticketed 7pm departure leaving me with the knowledge that I was in the wrong place to catch my onward transportation into China.

So I joined the line of people waiting at one of the counters. As the queue shuffled along, my confidence to get clarity on my whereabouts was high, even though I was armed with no words of the Soviet language in my arsenal. I figured my simplistic sketch of a train with an arrow pointing to Peking and 7pm written next to it and my enthusing Rusky accent of my desired destination of Yaraslav would do the trick. Unfortunately it didn’t, as all I received was a blank expression from the ticket master for he had no idea what I was trying to say. My picture was passed down the line of want to be passengers for their amusement. I walked away a little embarrassed, wondering who it was that said a picture spoke a thousand words. I came out into the street to be confronted by a group of taxi drivers. I assumed one of them would know where Yaraslav station was situated, but it was to no avail. I wondered if my translation was correct.

Because I hadn’t eaten that day, I gestured to one of the drivers (putting my hand to my mouth) eliciting his response of a positive nod of his head, leading me to jump into his car. We circulated the city for a while, then some more. Finally we stopped at some establishment, however no food was on offer. My frustration nearly got the better of me for the wasted trip and money that it was going to cost, so I asked to be taken back to our original location (which he seemed, inexplicably, to understand). I handed over a few US dollars before we both got out the car, and as we did, all the other drivers laughed in unison as their comrade flashed his cash. Here I was again; the centre of these Moscovites’ attention. Once more I blushed because of my embarrassment.

I started to walk the streets in search of some food and eventually found a place that could accommodate my desire. I purchased the only thing that was available, a large hamburger, however, after the first bite, I knew if I were to eat the whole thing it would be passing through me quicker than a high speed train. So I handed it over to the man with the solicitous expression sitting close by. I left the premises with an overwhelming dissatisfaction and started to make my way back to the train station (again).

It then dawned on me; many people I had already passed by on these cold, relentless streets of Moscow manifested a facade of dishevelled apparel, wearing lifeless expressions of pain and sorrow. It was obvious they were all aimlessly on the road to nowhere. The poverty and misfortune had abruptly come into my awareness which brought about a deep feeling of pain within my stomach. The reason for this was two-fold — firstly I had completely missed this depressive impression for I had been much too persistent on trying to feed my appetite more so than seeing the real world that happened to be right in my face all along, and secondly, I couldn’t bear to think about exchanging places with any one of these people, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to deal with their heartache.

This realisation had me thinking about where we are all born. Can it dictate to us, not completely, but to a large degree what our life will become on an external level? Being brought up in poverty could lead to hatred and anger but could the other end of the scale of too much wealth could lead to overindulgence and ignorance? And what about the average run of the mill class? Could that lead to a dull run of the mill life? I wondered what would be the best start in life that would lead onto an exquisite existence.

My upbringing was average by economical standards. We didn’t have everything we wanted but we did ok. My home city inculcated a certain amount of toughness and being streetwise was a common denominator. Generally my parents had enthused the meaning of freedom to my two older brothers and I, along with not doing anything wrong to others, being grateful for the things that we had and also being content for where we are at. To have dreams was also important, as long as we had an understanding that sometimes they can take quite awhile to come to fruition. These few words of wisdom probably summed it up, but the biggest gift they gave us was the meaning of choice. To a young boy (that I was), I was given a simple philosophy which was that we make the choices for our lives. To extend on this, the principle of choice had a collaborator, which was focus. My parents informed me that if I wanted something badly enough I must focus my attention on it and from this opportunities will arise. If these opportunities are acted upon, a shift will be created. This shift may take you directly to your goal or the shift may be only incremental and so moving you one step closer to it. However, as long as your focus remains your desire will be eventually fulfilled. You make the choice to implement your intention.

With melancholy lingering in my heart, I wondered if these people actually did have a choice. My thoughts drifted somewhat and then opted for Yaroslav station. I came to the taxi rank where all the guys recognised me and once again laughed at my expense. Any reaction on my part wasn’t conveyed because I now had been humbled by the realism of the Iron Curtain, for it had a fragility running way deeper than my brief, 23 years of life experience.

In the station I approached another counter with my work of art and pronounced Yaraslav to full effect. A voice called out from down the line. Someone had understood me;