Return to India

We’ve been in India for two weeks. The airports:, clean and modern. New Delhi, sanitized. Everything seemed much more tame than our last visit.

Last week, we arrived in Rishikesh from Dehradun via taxi, one of our most common forms of transportation here, especially when we have the whole family with us; taxies are less expensive than trains beyond a certain sized group. Our travels through Rishikesh and Laxman Jhula started to feel like, something. But I still hadn’t caught that feeling of being in India. Something about me was missing. Was I overly nostalgic in my romanticism of the India that I remembered from my last visit? Had I changed too much?

As we travel to Haridwar, the landscape and drive bring everything back into sharp focus. Suddenly India seems more: colors, sounds, people, vehicles. The villages smell like villages: diesel, sewage, animals and people to foods and wares. The traffic becomes a chaotic wave of cars, busses, scooters and other things (tractors, bikes, animals and people). Traffic in India is like a school of fish in the ocean: they dart in and out as one and can scatter just as quickly around an obstacle. They move like a hive mind. Tapping into that feeling, that motion is tapping into India itself: feeling the chaos of the place and making it a part of you.

Suddenly I am feeling like one with my surroundings again.

A Homecoming Long Overdue

This is the longest I’ve gone between entries and I’m sure I’ve lost some of you along the way. Sorry, a lot has happened. In the last entry, I was sitting in New Orleans (NOLA) awaiting the Day of the Dead celebration with Saumya and Drew.

I was moved sharing the experience of Vodou with my friend and fellow priest Drew at such a major holiday. The ceremony packed people within the peristyle (temple) and out into the adjoining alley. Once the initial celebration ended, we capped it off with our annual walk and offerings at the cemetery.

This trip to NOLA was directly preceding a major surgery we hoped to avoid. The surgery came two weeks later – and being a major one – we holed up and worked on her recovery. This was my first impediment to ignoring my blog. There were times, moments I could have written. Others where Zelda: Skyward Sword consumed Saum’s recovery while I supported her by remembering where things were in the game. I may have spent a few hours playing myself.

For several months leading up to this, we had planned on returning to India. In The Ascetic, the Therapist, the Priest and the Possessed, you’ll recall I said it had been 10 years of ongoing surgeries since they began. It had been 10 years since I had last been in India, where this whole period started. It has been roughly 9 years for Saum herself. Way too long for both of us to be away.

Right before the surgery, I started laying the foundation for our return trip to India.

Sita Sings The Blues

We love to watch movies in our house. If it wasn’t for movies, we might not have a television. This year started with us watching a lot of bad films. Earlier this year, while on our Belize vacation, we saw 2012 and Apocalypto. We didn’t necessarily mean to, but they were there in the room – and it was raining. They were bad.

We finally broke out of the bad movie phase with the discovery of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, by Terry Gillium. It was Heath Ledger’s last film and it was excellent. It broke the run of bad films. Things were looking better.

Four Elements

Water

I watch your rolling waves come to me, crash upon the shore. I see patterns in the ripples of your crest. Your tide rises and falls like a gentle breath. You bring with you such power. Moving all in your wake, even the rocks yield to your strength. Everything shifts and is shaped by you. Nothing stands for too long. You utterly annihilate the perceived permanence of land, gently and slowing bending to your will.

(Photo: Waves on the shore of Eleuthera, Bahamas, in the tail and wake of Hurricane Katrina, 2005)

24 Hours On Top Of The World

Just of few days over a decade ago I found myself on top of the world. I was in India, in the Himalayas sitting in an old and ancient Shiva temple with the whole world spinning around me. It was January, 2000 and one day past the mark of the new millennium.

To say this place is magical would be an understatement. I obviously felt it, but I was not alone. The animals would run into the area, when being chased for their very lives in the hunt, and the predators would respect it’s sanctity. It is a sacred place. I place teaming with spiritual, and sexual, energy.

As darkness fell, I came to the temple, lohi wrapped around me, carrying a mat. The Himalayas are cold at night, as cold as my Minnesota home, and this was winter. You needed to prepare, put on layers, socks, something to keep the earth from stealing all of your warmth, something to wrap up with. I left my shoes behind at the temple threshold, set my objects around me, wrapped up, turned off the flashlight and began to meditate.