The great courage is still to gaze as squarely at the light as at death: Camus

I finished Pico Iyer's Sun After Dark: Flights into the Foreign (2004. Alfred A. Knopf) today.

Pico Iyer - He is a master storyteller. How does one put it? - groping around in the fecund imaginative wilderness for the appropriate linguistic captions - to describe a Creative force so ineffably beautiful.

Only into the second page, and I feel the welcoming zephyr of the world I have - for awhile now, having read his Global Soul at least a year back [after a mild introduction to his writing through an old favourite module: Travel Literature through the Ages] - come to relish. The familiar - and idiosyncratically exultant - journeyings, replete with their exciting pauses, stops, exclamations, ellipses, and silences left untold. The affable narrative voice that, while voicing its epiphanies, gazes at you with its large, wizened-yet-innocence glazed, doe eyes, and leaves you bemused with your own wonderings (and wanderings) at what you just saw, heard, felt, before your next turn into an unsuspecting alley, mountain pass or ropebridge.

He takes you by the hand - as you travel (or retrace steps again) together - all the while, holding aloft his torch of humanity to show the way, as he shares with you his personal ruminations, punctuated artfully with profound, introspective observations and witty humour.
(And you nod in agreement, shake your head vehemently in disagreement, or gape in awe at human wonders - or at heart-wrenching riddles of life prodding people along their (dis)privileged and neverendingly potholed paths. You stop to question the existence or necessity or cause (or perhaps, a possible solution?) to anomalies unfolding before your mind's eye.)

Yet, just as you chill out atop the snowcaps near the Tibetan monastery wondering about the monk who seemed to somehow personify the goal most scriptures guide you towards, you find yourself stumbling - your feet hurting from walking the unpaved, stony roads and the ubiquitous "pebble in the shoe," your body aching from the bumpy, jangling ride through town, and your heart bleeding for the plight of the humanity you encounter - yet you also notice that, all the while, your travel companion,
(not too authoritative though: He leads you into the trail, yet you are somewhat left to your own musings, to tear down your walls of inhibitions, or clear your coloured,blinkered lens of vision, by yourself, if you want to continue the journey.)
he walks you through all the human celebrations, the sufferings, the confetti of excesses of the rich, trickling down but now, rendered useless in the troughs (or abyss, perhaps) to the souls severely deprived of the most basic human needs. And all the while - you observe - he does not wince at the palpable pain. He does not really (visibly, at least) whoop in joy at a celebratory moment - Only that sharp twinkle in the eyes crinkled with quick wit, speaking volumes by silence.

All through your travels (or travails, if you prefer) through enlightened or benighted places - or as he puts it, "blighted and transporting places," you walk at your own pace and keep discovering more and more of the crannies, crossings, shadowlands, of forgotten people and forgotten lands (of the people whose lives you'd taken for granted and shelved into the backstage of your imagination, after those solitary introductory lines years ago).

And what I find most endearing in his works - or as I prefer, his worlds - is this: the human honesty pulsing within. There is no deliberate attempt to hide the little human insecurities or trivial non-knowledge (say, like strictly knowing certain languages to attempt to understand the humanity of the people you meet). And yet, you find, you share the journey with a man so full of human compassion, to set aside so much of this life to learn - with a child's zeal and a learner's wit - more about our world's peoples, and most laudably, to share the learning journeys with you.

And as a personally-meaningful aside, as you find yourself speeding through the concluding chapters (I found myself consciously slowing down, perhaps to retain as much time as I could in this mystical world) and the end draws near, there is a poignant letting-go, as of the familiar moment when a good friend, after a treasurable meeting, gently takes leave of you. Eyes smiling, heart heavy, imagination so enriched, you whisper heartfelt wishes and hoping anew for another journey soon, wish genuine blessings upon this world, its humanity, its Creators (master storytellers, included) and the human wonders it lives out.


Minervan vouch: If you've not read Pico Iyer yet, do set aside some mortal time for it. Having read "The Global Soul" and "Sun After Dark," I vouch he's one of the greatest master story-teller, yet. Take care all & Keep discovering delight in wisdom tomes, people and our humanity.