Chapter Four

     Just as it is said that a picture can show the meaning of a thousand words, so it is that a word can voice the sound of a thousand meanings. When I was in my later twenties, beginning to give a hand to putting words together on paper to image some meaning, and beginning to dip my brush into pools of color in search of other ways to speak meaning, I coined a phrase to guide me on this new path I was following: Run After Beauty.

     Born in part I think from my Love of running as exercise, along long empty pathways through forests and fields, in search of the pace where my heart and lungs became one with the air I was swimming through, where my legs and my arms were not trying to get anywhere except in tune with each other, and the only sound in my brain was the balance between inhale and exhale. There was the place I as looking for as I set my pen to paper and brush to canvas. Such a simple thing to run for, the word with a thousand meanings.

    Run After Beauty.

     Thursday the seventeenth evening. Time for boots on the ground. Time for dodging traffic and looking out of both sides of my head while crossing intersections and filtering out the honks and beeps that are imminent from the more general background of unceasing cacophony, keeping ever especially mindful of lumbering buses turning through intersections.  There are stoplights and traffic cops, and a measurement of management and order, and I take my cues and stay close by other street crossers who are native to this system. Tuesday after breakfast, it’s west on P. High Road in search of a post office branch I’ve been told is down the street opposite the Blue Diamond hotel. The branch is more of a twig, and a small twig at that, nestled inconspicuously and unmarked amidst a nest of other little shops. Three women sit at their desks marking notes in their ledgers in this quiet little room, do not bother even looking up when I enter, and a helpful woman nearby confirms that this is indeed a post office. Mission accomplished for today. I’ve only wanted to find this place, and I stop at a nearby stationary shop to buy an envelope. Walk half a mile down the road, go across a couple of large intersections, sit at a bus stop to watch the comings and goings, detour through some other streets of shops, keeping ever alert and mindful of every step along the way.

     Wednesday morning head south across the overpass above the railroad tracks, catching an overview towards the East, following busy streets and negotiating intersections, getting the feel for how it all works, towards the huge, several acre complex of government museums of archaeology, anthropology, art, with library and what not, all in huge old nineteenth century red stone buildings, all requiring a fee. Not much into museum browsing now, just walking the grounds and snapping a few pictures of statues of gods and goddesses dancing or giving blessings. This walk is about a mile each way and I’m getting a bit limbered up.

     Thursday morning first east and then south, across another overpass above the railroad tracks to a narrow street following the curve of the Coovum river. This kilometer long stretch towards the arterial Anna Salai road is clearly the nest and central hive for the hordes of three-wheeled yellow auto-riks that endlessly ply the streets of the city. Shop after shop after shop of yellow auto-riks in all stages of disassembly and ongoing repair, even as the street itself is endlessly busy with a continuous flow of these denizens of the city’s traffic spectrum.

     Finally make it to Anna Salai where not far down the way is my old favorite, Higginbotham’s book store, landmark and refuge, air-conditioned and quiet. Looking for something to read since all I’ve had these last couple of weeks have been daily newspapers and the Lonely Planet guide book. And here is the Gem. Tales of the Sun, or Folklore of Southern India, compiled and told by Georgiana Kingscote and Natesa Sastri, first published in 1890, in a fresh hardcover edition. Thirty–three stories in three hundred ten pages, collected by the authors from their native servants and the old women of the bazaars. From what I’ve read so far, masterful tales in the spirit of what moderns would call magical realism. A treasure trove for the imagination.

     Then a little hitch up Anna Salai in the other direction for a visit to a major post office, the trunk of the tree that little twig from Tuesday is somehow attached to, where I can buy some stamps and  drop a letter to a friend across the ocean. Overall, a longer walk, perhaps a mile and a half each way, and back to the guest house for a shower and one o’clock lunch. Getting the feel for being out there, mixing it up with the crowd.

     Sunday evening, December twentieth. My final day in Chennai draws to a close as I prepare to depart for Pondicherry tomorrow morning. Thirty-two days since arrival, thirteen days at the school, nineteen at the YWCA Guest House. Meeting with Kiran Amarnath – Ray of the Sun’s Light – has been by far the most noteworthy occurrence of this entire period.  Many were the afternoon we found time to sit together at neighboring chairs in the lobby, or at a table in the dining room, or across one another in his office, for an hour or two or sometimes even three, and simply let the conversation evolve, sharing stories, making observations, and recognizing the common themes of understanding that inform our lives.

     This seventeen day stretch since I came here on Friday the fourth after the monsoon deluge that struck the city and likely had something to do with my sickness, has been my real initiation period, my coming to terms with this new world I have entered. Familiar enough in some ways from having been here before, but still a bit of a jolt from the life I had lived in America. From a household of too many things keeping me in a state of perpetual busy-ness and confusion, and social connections keeping me running from one end of town to another in circles of conversational amusement, I’m all the way back down to what I carry on my back to the bus station while keeping mindfully alert for that rare person who will cross my path with whom the heart can make a conversation. While memories, dreams and meditations from daybreak to nightfall to daybreak and then nightfall again continue, as the non-stop, twenty-four-seven entertainment center keeps the cameras rolling.

     I guess I can call these thirty-two days Act One of this play I am watching unfold. And tomorrow after breakfast, I’ll be wishing some sort of greeting in departure to the staff I have become familiar with here in the dining room, in the lobby, and in the hallways of my Chennai hacienda.

     Woke up this morning with the image of sitting with my two brothers and two sisters in the upstairs front bedroom of our childhood home, engaged in pleasant, sharing conversation, when a blue jay flies in through the open front window and finds a spot amongst us in which to perch and begin to preen. Interspersed amongst his bright, blue feathers are some bright red feathers, suggesting the influence of a cardinal into who this bird is. A reminder I think of the St. Louis Cardinals mythos that informed our home town aesthetic. I notice then that the bird is carrying some string-like thing in its beak, and I am unsure about whether the bird wants this thing or not, so I reach gently down to take it from him. The bird simply lets go and drops it without a second thought, then spreads its wings and lifts off and flies out through the window towards its freedom under the wide blue sky.

     Winter Solstice, December twenty-second, nine o’clock after the darkness has settled over the City by the Sea. A miracle walked into my life yesterday afternoon in Bharathi Park in Pondicherry. Her name is Louise Rose. She is tall like myself with red hair pinned up at the back of the top of her head, a fair and lovely woman from U.K., now forty-seven years old with ready smile and easy laughter through our conversation on the bench I have called her over to. She’s been in India a month living in Auroville, and will soon be going to an ashram in Thiruvanamalli for a retreat to be held from January first through eighth. I passed her by on the street earlier in the afternoon, in silence we walked by, and I wondered if we would meet again, and we did. Yesterday was my first day in Pondy and I was out for my first stroll after finding a rather dumpy guest house to set down my baggage. I was on my way to see the ocean’s horizon three blocks down the street, and here she comes in orangey Kalwar Chemise with green leggings, and here I am in my jungle pants and safari hat with sky blue shirt, and we had to find each other that second time to make the perfection complete. She needs to catch her bus back to Auroville by six and I promise to take the noon bus the next day, today, to meet her and continue our conversation, for there are mysteries that need to be explored.

     And there on the upstairs open-air patio for lunch, the miracle is magnified into a meeting of minds my words on paper will never be able to describe, as I tell her the story of my book, how it evolved from its inception, and I show her my most recent version. She follows my story with an attention, an interest, and an understanding that transcends any experience I’ve ever had in sharing my book with someone. We meet with tears of joy rolling down our cheeks over what is going on. She knows she has a role in bringing this book out into the world, as do I, while neither of are guessing about what her role will be.

     This journey of mine to India has just taken a quantum leap into new levels of understanding for what I am doing here. I thought I would be on the alert for people to show this book to, yes, but never did I imagine such a meeting as I have had with Louise Rose. And now I am planning for the when and the how to travel the three hour bus ride to Thiruvanamalli to participate in the eight day retreat at the ashram Louise is going to. Which will be conducted by a woman named Jaya whom Ray at the YWCA Guest House told me about.

     Louise also has an extensive experience in India from seventeen years ago, and had a direct visual meeting with the Dalai Lama that went to the center of her heart. So that all of these little occurrences I am encountering along the way are adding up to something quite beyond anything I can say is due to my sense for planning. Not only did I abandon my idea for teaching at Ambi and Shantha’s school, so I could go to the YWCA Guest House for two weeks so I could meet Ray, I had to spontaneously and unexpectedly decide to head for Pondicherry on Monday the twenty-first, so I could meet Louise and visit with her on the eve of her departure from Pondy.

     For my first night in Pondy last night, I had a most remarkable and lovely dream with Kristin my friend the anthropologist, and Diane my poet friend from Santa Fe. Those two don’t know each other, but there they were, and there we were together in the wishing well, and it was all magical. All in one of the dumpier little hotel rooms I’ve ever stayed in in India. Now I’ve got three nights in a wonderful little room at the New Guest House, one of the Aurobindo Ashram guest houses. Dinner last night and tonight at La Terrasse restaurant where my traveling partner of four years ago and I visited a couple of times.  A rather open air, thatched roof affair for those of us who favor simplicity and elegance in one sitting.

     Louise and I visited the art gallery at Auroville this afternoon during our five hour visit where we saw the lovely drawings of Aparajita Barai. Her visions are through ink on paper, re-visionings and interpretations of some of the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon. We meet Aparajita and I’ve signed up for a presentation and workshop she will conduct at this gallery tomorrow from three to six.

     This morning began with the ocean’s waves rolling in and rolling in, and breaking against black rocks, while a young fisherman steps into the waters just beyond the rocks to cast his net into those waves and then haul it back in as he searches for this day’s possibilities.

     Wednesday the twenty-third around noon. Poetry in Motion. Notes on the road. Pondicherry sunrise over the ocean’s misty horizon. Waves roll in, swell, fall all over themselves, and crash against the black boulders at land’s edge. Two and three man fishing boats dip and bob through the waves as the pale pink pearl of Surya emerges through the mist. Masala Dosa and a hot Latte for breakfast and a five day extension for the room that will take me to the thirtieth. Peace of Mind for my place to stay till I depart for the ashram retreat at Thiruvanamalli. Walk the Rue Romain Rolland through mid-morning pedestrian and scooter traffic to the Aurobindo Ashram where I pay my respects to the Source of this spiritual complex, Aurobindo and the woman known as The Mother.

     Find a travel agency shop where I can change some dollars into rupees. Find where I think I should be waiting for a bus and skip it for an auto-rik to the Auroville visitor’s center. Exit the rik, give the driver a tip, and on my path walking towards the visitor’s center, there is Louise on a stroll to visit her friend Annette for lunch. Call out to Louise and we chat for one minute as I confirm my intention to go to Thiruvanamalli for the retreat for the first week of January. Give Louise a rupees three thousand advance to pass on to Annette as down payment for the retreat. How did this happen? How is this happening?

     Café Latte and a slice of coffee cake at the visitor’s center, where I now sit writing these sentences. And of course the auto-rik driver idle at the corner where I stood waiting for the bus that was not due for an hour had to want a fare so badly that he offered me a ride to Auroville for the bargain price of rupees two hundred. Methinks there are in this equation more variables then I can put me finger on.

     Wednesday the twenty-third evening, at the New Guest House where my stay has thankfully been extended by five days till next Wednesday. I can see where the nature and focus of this logbook might begin to gradually deconstruct and reconstruct itself as information overload begins to settle in. All part of the fun. Just one side of my brain talking to the other side, as they debate with one another about what to think and talk about and how.

     After my Latte and coffee cake at the Auroville visitor’s center, walk the path to the Tibetan pavilion where I am the only visitor. Climb the inner stairwell to the large hardwood floored meditation rooms, with large open windows, some Thangkas hanging on the walls, and an altar area at one end of one of the two rooms. The sense of quiet serenity infusing these rooms annialates distracting thoughts. It would be so easy to sit up there for a very long time, but I am only a visitor this afternoon, so I bathe my mind in the emptiness for a while before rising, returning downstairs and passing through the gate to the rest of the world out there.

     Which in this instance is the presentation and workshop given by Aparajita Barai, who has authored the current exhibition of her drawings, India Beloved. About twenty of us are there, some on mats on the floor, myself included, and others on chairs against the wall. Aparajita engages each of us to first find an image of ourselves in pencil, then to color it with sharp-tipped colored markers, asking us to ask ourselves why we represent ourselves as we do. My self portrait emphasizes my blue eyes. I look at people a lot, and every once in a while, someone will comment on the blueness of my eyes. We are asked to create an environment for ourselves with objects that symbolize the things and traits that are important to us, and again, to ask ourselves why. I draw my river, my tree and my mountains, and come to an understanding that one thing I like about trees is that no matter how old they get, every year they put out new buds, as their sense for growth and reaching for the sky is with them until their final dissolution. My path up the river towards its source has always been with me, as are the mysteries I look towards in faraway mountains. Finally, a metaphorical personification we carry, and mine is the flying turtle, slow and determined on the ground, hard shelled for protection against the hungry world it walks through towards its single minded objective. And then, from time to time, out from under the sides of that shell emerge and unfold the wings of a great bird, wings that catch the wind and carry him high into the sky where he can soar and see the world he’s been walking through with his nose to the ground. Until he finds another patch of ground that he wishes to explore close up, where he lands, folds his wings beneath his shell, and begins another walk. I’ve met this feathered turtle before and this workshop has revived my awareness for who he is.

     Aparajita runs through a series of slides of well-known Hindu goddesses, explaining their attributes as symbolized through their arms, the objects they hold, and their attendant animals. Finally, she gives us about ten minutes to meditate on some important problem that we harbor, and to consider how we might approach that problem through some insight we might have developed during our exploration into our metaphorical inner worlds. For myself, I consider that I am precisely on the road to solving a wide range of problems I’ve been carrying around, simply by having deconstructed and disengaged from the life I had been living in my American world. This life I’ve been living here in India is barely more than one month gone, and the lights have been multiplying and leading one to another in truly inspirational alignments.

     Arriving at the art gallery forty-five minutes before the workshop was to begin, I sat on an entranceway step. A tall, slim young woman comes along, our inquiring eyes meet and I greet her. Very soft spoken and quite young she is and I tell her the Tibetan Pavilion is nearby where she can visit and she walks down that path. After the workshop, there is complimentary tea and cookies. Her rich, liquid eyes find mine and she begins a simple inquiry about how I liked the workshop, where I’m from and what are my plans. She is from Luxembourg, just a few months out of high school, has been in India for one week and is staying at one of the Auroville Guest Houses. She has plans to visit Nepal in March, and from there to Dharamshala, an itinerary similar to mine. Her voice is soft, her words are precise, her eyes pools of selective, receptive inquiry. Our conversation of mutual inquiry continues quietly along the path from the gallery until her direction and mine separate. We exchange email addresses and I give her the website address for my book, and I wonder if we might meet again in Nepal, which she says would be nice. I feel rather grandfatherly towards her, and feel like I’ve had a privilege in meeting this woman as she takes her first steps into the great mysteries of India, a girl who as she grows into her maturity, will surely become a woman of wisdom. Delphine.

          Thursday, December 24, 2015 at five in the afternoon with a lemon soda at

La Terrasse. So the big deal is about writing it all down. If I didn’t write it down, would it still count? As for what? Being real? The book has been about writing it all down. The book, writing it all down, is what brought tears of joy to Louise’s eyes, and to mine. If there was no book, there would be no tears, and if there were no tears, there would be no rainbows. And there would be no thoughts to share in writing with people whom I have never met, and will never meet. I am sending thoughts through words in writing that can truly only be sent through the voice and the eyes. And calling that my Life’s work!

     Words on paper saturate the reading mind, and the mind was not designed to spend its time in reading. Yet so I have become, and so I will continue, just as a musician, once he has found his instrument, will not easily set it down. And in fact carries it with him everywhere he goes. Shall I set my pen and paper aside, and walk through the world with only raw experience for company? Writing is the sieve through which I filter the fine from the coarse, and the reader is the source of Light for the words that flow from this pen.

     Meaning is an impossible pursuit, except when it flows through the eyes of two minds who have found each other, as Louise and I found one another two days ago. There is the meaning that cannot be described to anyone else. Do I even really know what was going on in Louise’s mind when her lips quivered and she could no longer hold back those crystal drops of joy that overflowed from her eyes? Could she even tell me, in so many spoken words, where those pearls streaming down her cheeks came from? Would I understand, in so many spoken words, even if she did?

     We met through our stories, we met through my book, and the tears were rolling down her face even as she only first held this book, as she looked at the cover, before she even read the first page. She knew the story of my drawings.

I had shown and explained to her the complete set of black and white drawings.

She held in her hands the culmination of the story of my thirty-eight year odyssey, the last chapter, the final version, and her sense for my sense of completion touched her heart in its depth, and her tears welled forth. And all I could do was cry with her, as we shared the essence of meaning.

     Friday, December twenty-fifth. Full moon time. Morning. “Why are you going to Pondicherry?” the bus conductor asks on Monday, at the rest stop along the way from Chennai. “Cod-L  Parkalam” To see the Sea, I tell him. At Dawn, before the sun disc emerges from the watery horizon, I have two short blocks to walk to the shoreline of black boulders where waves roll in, crest, then crash and spray a thousand tiny droplets into the cool salt air. Here there is no counting, only motion unrelenting, endlessly repetitive, endlessly singular. The horizon is mist with pale gray clouds, and veils the disc from view as She crosses the horizon. For the disc can be as feminine as well as she is masculine. Usha is her name and Surya is his, and they are both part of the new day becoming. Above the horizon between water and mist, here her soft red glow shines forth. Here is what I came to see. Sunrise over the ocean, and to listen to the heartbeat of the ocean’s timeless Rhythm. She rises from her softness and becomes his glaring light, casting bright reflections across the endless motion of the waters. The world awakens, the day is here, there are choices to be made, and streets and avenues to walk, and questions to ask, and answers to find. And places to discover, and memories to recover.

     Poetry in motion.  Friday morning walk to Mission street and the Aurobindo info center, where I capture an image of The Mother as a young woman, perhaps around as old as Delphine now is. A couple more blocks along the way is a Hiiggenbotham’s bookstore branch, where I am directed towards an internet connection location where I can respond to family and certain friends, and get the basic info from Annette on the Anantta Niketaan Ashram retreat coming up in one week. Then, along this street is a Tibetan gift shop and tea house where I have a plate of ten momos and a glass of cool Lemon Ginger tea. Note the brass Ganesha riding on his swing on the window sill. Then, connect with a money changer around the corner for sixty-six rupees to the dollar, the best price I’ve gotten so far. Then, pass by a major Vodaphone store which is now closed, but at least I now know where it is. Then walk to the beach where I connect with the Oceanside twenty-four hour coffee shop. Great find! Then sit on the rocks and watch the waves and pose for some photo requests, first with four teenagers, then with a man from Assam and his small son. A smallish white dog, clearly past middle age, picks up my trail and keeps me company till I find my way to the tourist office where I pick up info on a full scale Braratanatyam dance performance to be held Sunday evening. Sit on a park bench with an unknown friend, not long before an auto-rik and turning motorcycle slam it at an intersection, spraying ten thousand pieces of glittering headlight glass onto the pavement. Amazing that apparently there are no injuries, and my friend and I sit on our bench together for the time it takes for all parties involved to resolve their issues and drive off.

     Return to the black rocks where the waves continue their crashing and spraying until I step back into the city and find this WiFi coffee shop, the Boutique St. Laurent. Such is the day in exploration thus far at four in the afternoon.

     Next, find and try the Artika Café Gallery on Labourdonnais at Rue de Bussy, for a Ginger Lemon Honey tea, and at which place there is also WiFi, in an open air setting. Today is for sampling, this place and that, with my only objective to browse and discover in leisurely fashion the hidden gems behind mysterious doorways. On to the Café des Artes on Rue Suffren for a cup of Masala Chai, another WiFi spot in a garden setting under some large leaved coconut palm trees, along with a noisy crow until he decides to leave. From one cup of tea or coffee to the next I wander through the afternoon. Got to wonder who is out here who would recognize me as someone whom she is interested in meeting, as Louise was on Monday. European faces appear from around corners, and at nearby tables along the way. Recognitions that matter are usually mutual from very early on. Soul Mates are out here, partners in Spirit, and there is nothing for me to Do except Be Here Now, moving in tune with the planets and stars until we align.

     Louise is not my traveling partner on the ground. She has her relationship, grounded in Sweetness as she says, back in the U.K. She and I have something else, as Real as anything I’ve ever experienced. Soul Mates is a plural, and perhaps, just perhaps, I will meet my traveling partner along the way. As long as my mind is in its clear receptive place, the path is as the crystal of the Wish Fulfilling Gem. I’ve been on this path a very long time. What happens, will happen, and I cannot help but wonder what will happen next.

     Golden Glow sunset from Bharati park, then to the black rocks at the shoreline where the orangey full moon has risen over the ocean’s horizon. Winds are strong and waves are rolling high and crashing hard against the rocks, sending high arcs of spray into the air, and misty droplets reach my face. As Luna rises higher, her reflection in the waters widens and brightens until an avenue of Light reaches towards the horizon, rippling with the waves.

     Saturday, the twenty-sixth. Morning, out to the shoreline rocks early enough to catch Jupiter shining straight overhead and bright morning star Venus high in the East, with faint Mars between those two, while full moon sets to the west over the city as Usha heralds the Dawn over the Eastern horizon and Sun-Surya glimmers through the far away low-lying clouds. Time now to plan another day and the days remaining before departure on Wednesday. There will be four more morning sunrises over the ocean. Then the bus ride to Thiruvanamali for the retreat which closes on Friday the eighth, after which I may return to Pondicherry, or shall I move in another direction? And what direction would that be? What kind of extended stay possibilities are there here in Pondy? Questions, questions, Questions!

     Sunday morning, December twenty-seventh. Clouds are deep across the horizon, rising high into the blue that almost isn’t there. Waves are rolling strong and heavy, cresting and falling relentlessly. Venus and Jupiter above are hidden behind gray mist, and the soft glowing pink pearl of Sun-Surya will not shine through this morning.

     Answers to yesterday’s questions. Walk to the Vodaphone store on Nehru street by slightly before eleven to meet with Iyyappan and decide to buy a basic Indian phone. Two thousand rupees, about thirty dollars, and another five hundred rupees for 286 minutes to be used within three months. Will stop by tonight at eight to pick it up. Walk back to the Oceanside beach twenty-four hour coffee shop to sit with a large latte and soak up some ocean breeze in a palm tree’s shade. Now begins the search for where will I stay when I return from the Thiruvanamali retreat. The Aurobindo Seaside Guest House is clearly for the more affluent Ashramites. Then walk the several blocks to the North Boulevard turnoff where the Paradise hotel is booked solid till March. The Executive Hotel’s basic room is twenty dollars per night, too much for me unless I really have to. Then to the Aurobindo Garden House and other such places that are all unavailable, and I’m directed to the long walk to the Maravadi street locale for other possibilities. Stop at Chez Nous – La Maison Auroville for a latte and chocolate cake and a shady rest at one-forty. House of many pizzas, and Hey Jude filters through from another patron’s speaker phone. Mahavadi street is a decidedly quiet, native street along the northern shoreline. Small huts and houses along the seaside, larger homes along the other. The French lady at Mother’s House says she is all booked up. Around the corner I walk to Ayodya Bhavan, and I feel like I’m running out of options and possibilities are evaporating. Push the gate open and there is a European fellow, lean and fair, about my own age, and he says come in and let’s see. I request a month starting January eighth and he’s got something for me at the astronomically low price of two hundred rupees per day. The second floor room with balcony is a gem.

I walked all the way to the very end of my rope, and here is Lakshmi’s blessing!

Nowhere else in India will you find any such room for two hundred rupees per day, and my heart takes a quantum leap of relief for this room in this building where I can feel at home.

     Ismo is from Finland, and assures that my inquiry is timely, for all rooms will surely be fully booked within a couple of days. I leave my five hundred rupee deposit, and look forward to not only the room, but to the company of Ismo and other most likely like-minded residents. Exit for the return walk along Mahavadi street, and after a couple of hundred yards find that I am catching up to a more leisurely walking older European fellow. He stops at a seaside viewpoint and I walk over to greet and see if he speaks English, which he does, and he is receptive to our meeting. Shall we have a coffee or tea, he asks, which I surely welcome, and he leads me through some turns through some narrow side streets to a nice three story building where we climb a narrow stairwell to a full-sized multi-roomed apartment, well furnished, with a full kitchen, and a room with a complex computer setup on a large desk.

     Here is Jean-Pierre from Paris, who knows Santa Fe, whose business has much to do with web site development. He is a philosopher and psychiatrist by training, who follows the Freudian school. Here again is a man of around my own age, with full mustache and hair on his chin, who likes to smoke cigarettes and has recently returned from Paris where he’s had some medical procedures performed near his heart. He is really quite fascinated with modern medical technology, and is quite a liberal minded thinker. He brews a full pot of coffee which he and I drink trough our conversation at his dining room table. He’ll be going back to Paris for about six weeks on January eleventh, so it’s not likely that I will get to know him much more unless I wind up staying in the neighborhood beyond that time, but he says I am always welcome in any case. We are finished with our coffee by around four-thirty, and I’m back to the return walk along Mahavadi street, which I will be getting to know very well in the weeks to come. I’m on the complete opposite end of town from where I’m staying at the New Guest House, and will not be returning there now, as I’ve got an eight o’clock appointment with the Vodaphone man, so I sit on the black rocks on the shore and watch the waves roll in for a while with a renewed sense of some vague, undefined purpose and attachment to this City by the Sea.

     As the evening throngs take over the promenade, walk back into the inner streets in search of the Café des Artes for a quiet place to sit. Find a small cobbler’s shop along the way, and stop in to get my feet measured for a custom made pair of sandals, which fine pair will be ready Tuesday evening on the eve of my departure for the retreat.

     Then find the Café des Artes, and sit with a pot of hot Masala Chai till closing at seven, then head on over to meet Iyyappan at the Vodaphone store for my new electronic communication device. Then walk the long walk back to my room at the New Guest House by around nine for a refreshing shower to wash the sweat of the day down the drain and be thankful for all of the day’s decisions, accomplishments, and blessings.

     Monday evening, December twenty-eighth. Getting my head ready for my Wednesday trip to Thiruvanamali. Sunday afternoon walk along South Boulevard to the not very far away train station. Schedule does not fit. Then walk further to the bus station, where departures are frequent. Then to the Juice Wagon at Bussy and Mission for walkabout intermission before heading on over to the dance program that starts at six.

     Here at the Juice Wagon, pen and paper is my friend. We keep company and make observations. We like quiet tables at quiet restaurants, especially during long walkabouts, like we did back in Chicago when I was in my late twenties and early thirties, and wanted to be a writer even though I had never taken a writing course and I did not know anyone else who thought of themselves as a writer. Some kind of a Lone Ranger was I. Juice Wagon has ten tables, six tables for four and four tables for two. Wonder if the owner ever works a packed house. Two orange-pineapple smoothies hit the spot for me, on my way to the Bharata Natyam dance performance as the afternoon fades.

     The dancers are a Joy to watch. Mostly younger to older teenagers, with a few younger girls, and some that might be in their younger twenties. Have to be old enough to have studied and practiced for enough years to have gotten as good as they are. The nine emotions of Bharata Natyam, each in its own vignette, each in a story from Tamil mythology or history, or from that storytelling place that blurs between history and mythology.

     Navarasa: The Nine Fundamental Emotions of Bharata Natyam.

First, the invocation dance to Lord Vinayaga, the dancing elephant-headed Lord, he who helps us overcome our obstacles, he who is the Obstacle to Obstacles.

Then the sequence of nine stories through dance. Beginning with Singara – Love, as portrayed by Lord Rama and Sita Devi, when they see each other for the first time and lose themselves in each other’s loving gaze. 

     Then Haysa – Mirth, as Draupadi laughs at the plight of Duryodhana when he foolishly trips and falls over his own mistake. Illustrating the saying: Laughter is the best Medicine.          Third we have Compassion, as illustrated by Saint Vallalar’s compassionate empathy for all life forms, even to the sight of withering crops moving him to tears, until miraculous rains fall down to revive them. 

     Fourth we have Roudra – Anger, when righteously brought forth, as when Kannagi’s anger is directed at the Pandya king who unjustly killed her husband, her anger so powerful as to cause the fiery immolation of the beautiful ancient city of Madurai. 

     Fifth, there is Valor, and the historically recent story of Tiruppur Kumaran who laid down his life to defend the honor of the flag of the Indian freedom movement. 

     Sixth, there is Bhaya – Fear, “the unnerving experience of a trembling body afflicted with a muddled mind that causes all to be lost.” Princess Kunti pleases Maharishi Durvasa with her devotion and receives the boon “to summon and beget a child from any God at will. She fears social condemnation as an unwed mother after bearing a son from Lord Surya. The terror of the unknown for both herself and her son Karna overtakes her as she leaves him to his fate in the wild river’s waters.”

     Seventh is Beebatsa – Disgust, which “manifests when we see, hear or feel things that are gross or bitter. The bitterest of the bitter experience is manifested when we witness human beings behaving in a sub-human animalistic manner.”

Shameful behavior is illustrated when the King of Dharma, Yudhisthira, violates Dharma by wagering and losing his kingdom. “Disgusting behaviors are there like a temple priest selling the idol, and the watchman himself stealing from the house he is to guard.”

     Eighth is Abhuta – Awe, the ecstatic feeling that takes our breath away when experiencing any grand spectacle. “What greater astonishment can there be than seeing the young Poompavai being brought back to life from ashes by the song of Sambandhar?”

     Ninth is Shantha – Peace, as shown through Buddha’s encounter with Angulimala, “the infamous highwayman who waylaid and killed his unfortunate victims. . . .Upon meeting the Buddha, Angulimita loses all sense of violence and attains an inner quietude and peace.”

     Altogether, a troupe of about forty dancers, many of whom went through several costume changes as the series of stories progressed. I had an open view from a third row seat with no one in front of me, and could watch the facial expressions and intricate movements of the dancers in pristine detail, surely a view to be treasured for a dance that is designed and choreographed to illustrate and express emotional nuance.

     Monday morning is again thick with clouds on the horizon and the waves continue to roll in with vigor and crescendo, and again the fishermens’ catamarans are idle in the sand where, on calmer days, they would be coming in now with their netfulls of the  morning’s catch. Go out for a late morning visit to the St. Laurent coffee shop, boutique, and WiFi spot. Cannot make the connection, but find the poster for a Tuesday night Bharata Natyam performance at the Katashreya Aurodhan Garden on the North side of town. Will certainly plan to be there. Walk to the Artika Café and WiFi hotspot where I make the connection, have two cups of hot Lemon Ginger Honey tea, and read emails relevant to the forthcoming Thiruvanamali retreat.

     Thursday morning, the twenty-ninth. Horizon clouds are low, and incoming waves not so high, bright Venus is with us this morning, and the red glow of sun-Surya shines through the far away mist. At some unknown hour in the early morning darkness, I am being led by one of those large, black water buffaloes that paddy farmers follow in their fields. This animal has some characteristics of hairiness and the hump back of the American bison. I am following this animal through some misty portal until my eyes open and I am utterly convinced that I am lying down on a cot in the living room of my childhood home. I’m looking at the dark black screen of a T.V. and feel for the words coming to my throat, mildly choking words that are hard coming forth, and I must willfully force them through my voice. “My eyes are open, and all I see is darkness.” I say this sentence three or four or five times to make sure I’m saying these words right, that I’m hearing them right. I am consciously awake in this room and am convinced of this location until my mind sorts itself out and I see this guest house room I’m in. But there is no doubt that my ears have heard me speak these words, so difficult and so necessary in coming forth in vocalization.

     So what is this all about? I recall the two years between graduating high school and going off to the University in Champaign – Urbana. I worked at the AT&T building in mid-town St. Louis, a square block of a building several stories high full of communications equipment where I spent forty hours every week, performing routine and troubleshooting tasks. I made a few new friends there, but my high school world had evaporated, those friends had gone off in their various directions, and my family was going through serious financial hardship while my unemployed father was trying to redefine his life, having left the torture chamber of the Chevrolet factory behind. He had a plan, but the plan was not going well, and for a year my modest starting income at the phone company was the major support for our family. My plans to save for college were delayed and I had lots of empty time to think about where I wanted to go and what I wanted to study. Nancy, the youngest sister at seven and eight, was growing and the sleeping arrangements in our small house changed. I went to the couch in the downstairs living room, while parents and brothers and sisters slept in the two rooms upstairs. I had no homework or tests to study for, only a dream for going away to some other place to college. I turned the pages of many college bulletin books, analyzing costs and programs in Engineering, looking forward to the day when my dad got back on his bearings with a reasonable position and income, which he eventually did, and I then saved money like a miser for the chance to pack my bags and be off on my way to begin the new life of my own.

     Our family has a good spirit of togetherness, but I could not help, as I was reading and sleeping in the living room at night, like the caretaker of my family upstairs. Patiently waiting through an ocean of loneliness in my heart for the time when I could step forth into the new world of learning, a new world of visions becoming, a new world of friendships. Those were the times when sometimes when my eyes were wide open, all I could see was darkness. Why this dream is here now, I don’t exactly know, except perhaps as a reminder of how far I have come. There is some light now in my life. Perhaps there could be more. Perhaps there will be more. For now, sunrise over the ocean’s horizon, and fresh winds from across the waves, are my most excellent friends.

    

Log Chapter Three

          Monday early afternoon. Images from dreaming. It’s all the same world I live in, the dreaming world and the waking world, and all that is remembered is simply carried forward, into another day, into another night. I’m standing at a streetlight corner in Albuquerque, Alameda and Rio Grande Blvd. to be specific, with a little girl at my side, eight or ten years old. The changing lights tell us to walk. Her pace moves ahead of mine, but not excessively so, but the walk light timing is short and we must both walk briskly to get to the other side before cross traffic is given the go ahead. We go to a bus stop at the curb next to a field, where a few lime green polar bears are walking slowly through the grass. Seems so very non-sensical. The bus comes to pick us up, and when I get on, I am told by the conductor there are two fares, thirty-five cents for students with IDs, and fifty cents otherwise. The little girl disappears into the not-so-crowded bus, while I fish around for my ID, which I cannot find in my wallet. The conductor says Ok for this time, but you must have it for next time. I find a seat near a window. The little girl has vanished. This is a Madison, Wisconsin bus line. I drove these bus lines for four years between 1978 and 1982, and they are deeply embedded in memory. We’re on East Washington approaching the Capitol Square through late afternoon snowfall. As we pull up to one of the stops on the square, I see the face of a woman I knew but did not know from way back then, thirty-five years ago, half of my lifetime ago. Madison for me in those years between the central part of the city, the Capitol Square, and the university campus, was a sea of familiar faces. As bus driver and all-purpose walk-around guy, I felt there was hardly a face I didn’t recognize from somewhere in this part of town. This tall, lovely, graceful woman was about my own age, and there was a strange chemistry that connected our occasional by-the-way glances, but I never got to know her, and always wondered what our conversation would sound like. As those years went by, her visage receded, and eventually disappeared, as my waking life was absorbed by all of the others in my conversational life.

     Now in this dream, I sit as a passenger in this bus on the square. She stands at the bus stop in the gently falling snow, and we are both as old as we are now, thirty-five years later, and her eyes light into mine like the brightest two stars in the night, with a penetrating affirmation that we have arrived at a mature understanding of who we are and what we are about. Shortly thereafter, I step off the bus, not to approach this woman or meet her, for we have met, and she has disappeared, but to simply walk the sidewalks of the Madison Capitol Square through evening snowfall, as I had done so many times during those years, with a sense of peace and connection with everything around.

     Late morning walk through the front gate to east on the noisy, busy Poonamallee High Road where every motorbike and car with a horn electrifies the air with its warning. Blue skies break through while hot sunlight and humidity saturate the ambiance. Turn left at the light and dodge my way along sidewalk and street to the Airtel hole-in-the-wall shop to inquire about an internet stick. Bit of a language barrier here as the shopkeeper wants to know if I have a Chennai ID. . . . huh? . . Walk back to the guest house, and meet with Ray who fills me in on some basics. First of all, the guest house normally has WiFi, but normal is not an operational word these days. Connectivity is down in many sectors throughout the city . . . for cell phones, for internet, for ATMs, for credit card transactions, and has been especially so since the big downpour last Tuesday. Second, there are two primary connectivity sectors in India, one for the four southern states where we are, which is why I need a Chennai ID, which is something on the order of an address verification, and one for the north, which centers in Delhi. My southern ID would not work in the north and vice versa.

The YWCA can provide the guest house address as my Chennai ID for the time

I spend in the south. How many other quirks there are to getting this function set up and running I don’t know, so I think it best to not be in too big of a hurry and be sure I know what I’m getting when I start handing out rupees for equipment and services.

     In today’s newspaper, I learn that “of the (Chennai) Corporation’s area, the 172 sq. km. of the old city (where I am) have storm water drains while the remaining 254 sq. km. have no storm water drains but only drains constructed by the local bodies that are not connected to the rivers.” In another article, “huge tracts of densely populated areas became completely inaccessible floating islands. As power was switched off to avoid large-scale electrocution, mobile towers, basic telephony networks and internet cables too went kaput, making all forms of communication impossible. So, inaccessible and incommunicado are two words that best described the plight in most people in the state over those scary three or four days (last week).” Today is a short reprieve. More rain is forecast for the next three or four days, and Pondicherry and hard hit Cuddalore are also on the target, so it looks like Ray’s suggestion that I could go to Pondy if I wanted is a bit premature, and wisdom would dictate that staying right here is my only sensible option.

     Besides, Ray has become a shining gem of Light for me here. After clarifying connectivity issues and updating the weather forecast, Ray asks me who is this little girl he sees standing around me all the time. . . .huh? . . He holds his hand out palm downward a couple or three feet above the floor where we’re sitting in the lobby, and tells me there is a little blond, blue-eyed girl who is always near me, and he wonders who she is. Thinking through my friends and acquaintances around the world, I can’t identify who she might be. Some people see things that others do not, he assures me, and of course I know this is true, though I am generally not so forthcoming as Ray with my observations around my friends and family where I come from. Many of them are generally not used to such ideas, and there is little point in bringing these kinds of things up unless I feel that person is attuned to listening. It is simply an insight I can keep in mind as my friends and I continue our everyday conversations about who we are to each other. Ray sees the little girl around me, and I am touched to the quick of my heart. Ray steers the conversation to the Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry and the philosopher, mystic and writer, Aurobindo Ghose, who illuminated the spiritual path that led to the beginnings of the ashram named after him. When I lived for two years in Cuddalore near Pondy, when I was in my mid-twenties, Aurobindo’s writings informed my first encounters with Indian spirituality. I knew the place and some of its residents those forty-five years ago. Ray tells me that his grandmother, when she was carrying his mother, met Aurobindo. Ray and I are not analyzing cause and effect relationship, simply stating the things we see and know, and there is no one to say these things are true or not-true. They simply are, for those who can see, and know how to listen, and sometimes the sharing is right. Ray has given me a Ray of Light. He has a poem he wishes to share, and goes over to the front desk to stand and write it out.

     An Ode to New Beginnings

Amidst busy operations of my day

John Ashbaugh walked my way.

It was an absolute pleasure to see him

Living in love, light and harmony.

Interacting with him

Swept my heart away

Bringing meaning to my mundane day.

When it’s time to go his own way

I will continue to hope and pray

That this love, light and joy he shares

Grows deeper and sharper

With every ‘curve’ life throws his way.

*  - * - * - * - *

Dear John,

In a world of excess it renews my faith

To know that God and Mother Nature

Still take time off to create

Selfless souls like you.

With much respect, love, light and living

Only to serve another day.

Kiran  “Ray”  Amarnath

07 – 12 – 15

Chennai YWCA International Guest House

* - * - * - * - *

     Wednesday evening, December ninth. The city waits now for the aftermath, and hopes that the worst of the deluge has passed. After Monday’s blue skies reprieve, more showers have been expected, and skies over the guest house have been completely overcast, but no water is fallen. The toll so far listed in Tuesday’s newspaper is 427 for the state, including 134 in Chennai, and more is expected as the effects of sickness and disease set in. Unthinkable amounts of garbage and refuse, as well as the rot from animal carcasses – goats, cats, dogs and cows – will add to the festering air, and persons trapped in submerged homes have already been found. Fishing boats and helicopters are deployed to aid in rescue efforts and convoys of trucks try to deliver food packets and aid. Medical staff is overwhelmed, and the effects of PTSD are sure to set in for those who lost, quite literally everything, when their homes were washed away. Here at the guest house, we bear the inconvenience of no internet connection, and watch television images of all that is going on around us.

     Cuddalore district has been slammed, vast tracts are still underwater, and over a hundred persons have already died there. I think of that part of town where my Peace Corps supermarket is. I think of my home at Fort St. David out by the beach. I think especially of Bhanumati’s humble home just a few blocks from the supermarket, and wonder what is become of her and her family. I wonder what will be there when I return to visit, and how long it will be until I can visit, and who will be there to visit, when all I can do now is sit here and wait.

     I have my room with ceiling fan and open window, and the guest house lobby one floor below where visitors come and go, and Aruna and Daphne and other desk clerks answer questions and register and discharge guests. I visit the dining room every morning for breakfast and coffee and sign up for lunch or dinner, but usually not both. I can walk the expansive courtyard and visit the pond and the chapel. I can walk to the light at the corner, turn right and walk another block to the Nilgiris supermarket to buy sundry items, going as much for the walk as anything else. I read in the paper that the sector where the school is still has water and drainage issues. I wonder if Ambi and Shantha are still trapped in their house and how the school is doing. Again there are no classes for a week, and I suppose it’s safe to say that this semester has in a sense, been blown out of the water.

     Ray continues to shine his Light in the lobby and the dining room. He is an ambassador of goodwill to all visitors and guests and has learned a range of simple greetings and phrases in many languages from places he will never go.

We sit sometimes in adjoining chairs at a small round coffee table in the lobby and he tells me some of his stories. He has a Native American name, Thunder Moon, given to him by a Native American visitor some years ago. Along with a long eagle feather. The name is given based on the month of Ray’s birth. Which tribe? The name-giver told Ray that he was of the tribe that told the most stories. Giving names according to the time of birth is akin to the Hindu tradition, and the name Kiran was chosen for this man in that way. As Ray and I sit sharing stories, various guest house personnel are frequently walking over to him in search of a signature of approval. He doesn’t seem to spend very much time in his office, as the world of guest house employees and visitors whirls around him and he weaves the magic of his Light, keeping abreast of everyone’s needs and desires and stories, with quiet, thoughtful, soft-spoken sincerity.

     Thursday, as morning light illumines the room. Begin this morning’s dream with driving the dark two-lane highway towards home from the monthly second Wednesday gathering of poets at the Bernalillo Range Café. As I approach the roundabout intersection with Tramway and the bridge across the river, the road narrows and becomes mucky. I exit my car and proceed on foot, searching through the sloppy water-logged ground for a path to the bridge. Various large highway construction vehicles sit around in idle waiting and various pathways

I venture prove blocked or impassable. A couple of other poets from the Range Café gathering are also here and none of us are having success in our search for a viable path. Until finally another poet, one of the younger women, appears on the scene and leads the way over a small embankment to a clear open path we can follow to the bridge.

     From here I go to my grandmother’s house in the small Illinois town where my parents came from. This is my mother’s mother’s home that as children my brothers and sisters and I visited so many times, a center of extended family community where we enjoyed the company of grandparents, uncles and aunts, and some of the other elders. Everyone is now here socializing in a congenial way. Everyone is of their age when I knew them at their best, while I am pretty much as old as I now am. Someone goes out to check for mail and comes back and says there is nothing for me. On the pretext of taking a walk, I go out to check for myself. I must walk down the quiet street at dusk to where the big metal box sits on a concrete pillar. When I open the latch to look in, I see piles of muck and old rotted leaves, and a few waterlogged pieces of mail that look like they could be addressed to me, but are essentially addressed in gibberish. I reach in to pull all of this yuck out and throw it into the shallow drainage ditch at the foot of the mailbox post. The cavernous mailbox, now free of rotting debris, is clear and serviceable, and I enjoy my walk back along the old street of that once familiar neighborhood as dusk settles into the soothing darkness of nighttime’s first starlight.

     Thursday mid-morning, with my ever-changing plan for the months ahead.

Christmas tree goes up in the lobby this morning and the skies are completely overcast. Newspapers are full of stories of displaced persons trying to recover, trying to survive. Stories of squalor, and sickness and filth. Stories of tragic deaths and morgues filling with unclaimed bodies. Stories of inadequate relief and relocation facilities, and oceans of helplessness and desolation that surround this enclave of normality where I have my choices between corn flakes with milk and sugar, and fried eggs and buttered toast, and puris with coffee or tea or both. And streams of traffic go by outside and I wonder where everyone is going and why.

     Spin the roulette wheel of idle itinerary planning. With each passing day,

I become more settled into the life of the guest house with no sense of hurry to go anywhere, knowing full well that wherever I go, I’ll be looking for what I have here, a comfortable room with amiable company around and time every day to make up my mind about what to do next. From one such place to another I will wander, and I wonder which ones will follow one another and why. I could stay here for the next three weeks till the first week of January, waiting for the flooding up and down the coast to subside and begin to dry out and for the shockwaves of devastation to fade before taking the bus or train to Pondy for a month long visit to that town and neighboring Cuddalore. I could then return to Chennai and catch a plane to the Andaman Islands far out in the ocean west of here, spoken of in the Lonely Planet as a tropical paradise. That would be for February and into early March. Then fly from there to Calcutta and change planes for Kathmandu and spend a month in the valley there. Then take the road across southern Nepal to Rishikesh in Utterakand for a couple of weeks. Then on to Dharamshala for a month. Then on to Srinigar before heading over to Leh in July where I would stay till September. I would have to leave the country again by then, and could return to Nepal for a visit to Pokhara  or the Kathmandu valley again until I decide that it might be time to revisit the USA , or who knows what kind of plan I might be up for by that time. The overland traveling will always be the hardest part of this itinerary, and I hope I can figure out ways to make it as easy on myself as possible. In the end, it always comes down to finding this quiet room somewhere, with a few kindred souls with whom I can share stories, and with whom I can create new stories to carry along to wherever my path goes next. All the while filling my notebook with thoughts and dreams along the way. There can be no hurry to go anywhere.

     I have been telling myself that I came over here to meet somebody. The person I came here to meet is actually myself. Three weeks have gone by and today is day one of week four. There are no poetry readings to attend. There are no art show openings. There are no movies I need to see, and my Netflix account is defunct. I’ll not be attending any shootouts at the pool hall, and I will miss all of the NFL playoffs. I am missing all of the news desk updates for the latest archaeological discoveries of remnants of ancient civilizations, and do not know whether Atlantis has been convincingly discovered or not, or what ancient Egyptian mysteries have been revealed. I do not know who is shooting who in the United States, or anywhere else for that matter. All of the usual suspects, I’m sure! I do not know how many people are outraged, or what they are all outraged about. I do not know what the banking cartels are planning for the next economic catastrophe. I do not know why brother is pitted against brother and sister against sister, in this world where getting along is so much more fulfilling. I do not know who is going to bomb the fuck out of whom next, but I do know that it will happen and that the ravages of war will continue unabated until the last asshole standing thinks he is king of the hill. Pockets if Intelligence will survive in remote corners of the globe, and they may or may not find each other, and it really doesn’t matter if they do or if they don’t. All that will matter will be whether or not two or more people can find love in their hearts for one another. If you are already there, the rest is smoke to the wind, and there is no need to know anything else.

     Friday morning. Begin this little dream standing amidst the flotsam and debris of my past life, this life I have led this time around. Piles of accumulation in no particular order and I feel the strong sense that something is incomplete. I’ve been putting something off that needs to be done. Like I need to take one more college course to complete my degree, and I am somewhere in the middle of this course and need to take some exam but have been negligent and am woefully unprepared. I owe some work to my art school professor, and am so far behind that if I don’t turn something in soon, my eligibility for graduation will expire. I look for some clothes and all that I find is dirty and grungy. I’m watching a group of college students, amongst them some beautiful young sorority types, laughing and playing a game of tug-of-war amongst themselves, but I cannot go to join them for I must be on my way to take my test and complete my degree. I drive my car over to somewhere near a campus, park on a side street and begin walking in search of the building where I must go to prepare for and schedule and take my test. This sprawling campus is an amalgamation crossover between the West Texas A&M and the University of Wisconsin – Madison campuses that I spent so many years at, and it seems the further I walk, the larger it gets, classroom buildings multiply in every direction no matter which way I go and I am feeling hopelessly lost. Classes let out and mobs of young students fill the walkways and I seek a direction away from them, and am continually unsure about which way to go. Evening light begins and I come to an outdoor assembly of ROTC students all dressed in their uniforms seated in a huge amphitheatre like the curving end of a football stadium. They are all paying attention to what is going on at the foot of the amphitheatre, band music and fireworks and speechmaking. I see that I can climb the steps on one side of the amphitheatre, no one will pay any attention to me and I can arrive at a high point overview of this sprawling, confusing campus terrain and get an idea for where I am at, get my bearings for where to go.

     When I get to the top tier of this amphitheatre, there is a doorway into a very tall tower, which I enter, and begin to climb a spiraling staircase that eventually leads to a metal runged ladder that becomes narrower and more precarious the higher I go, but I continue to the topmost rung where I can look through a hole-in-the-wall window to an airplane height view of the capitol square and isthmus and university area of Madison, and I can follow with my eyes that network of streets I walked through for so many years of my life. That landscape-cityscape then blends on one side into the West Texas A&M campus in Canyon, extensive and grassy and less urbanized. This is truly an awesome overview of this combined Madison, Wisconsin and Canyon, Texas terrain, and now I begin climbing down, rung by rung, this precarious ladder, and must be very careful not to lose my grip from this wavering height or I will surely fall tragically to the bottom of this tower I am trying to slowly descend, and I awaken in awestruck wonder of the overview I’ve just had, and in trepidation of the height I so precariously hold onto.

     Twenty-six years between when I was thirty and arrived in Madison to when I was fifty-six and moved from the West Texas town of Canyon to Albuquerque. Two campuses, lots of time going to school, innumerable hours reading through countless books in the library stacks, three art degrees and all kinds of hours in English linguistics, . . . that whole middle chunk of my Life. What was that all about? Open my eyes and stare in awe at the three-winged ceiling fan slowly turning. How many words do I have for that story? And for whom is the story to be told? And what exactly is it that I need to understand?

     Violette is native to Chennai and lives and works as a paralegal in New York City. Diminutive in size and nearing sixty, she visits her family here from time to time and takes special interest in her nieces and nephews. She is interested in my poetry book and says she is working on a book of her own poetry and hopes to get it published. She introduces me to her forty-two year old nephew Dominic yesterday after lunch. We three sit around a small coffee table in the lobby. Dominic is a handsome young man but somewhat disheveled and has a horrendous wound to his left shin, broken in a motorcycle accident. It is all scabbed over and there are some bandages but no cast and he walks with the help of a four-footed cane. The story that comes from Violette is that Dominic needs to seriously get his act together. He’s got a drug problem with ganja and hashish and has been hooked up with a woman for the last fifteen years whom Violette feels is a bad influence on Dominic, siphoning off whatever money he comes into and doesn’t spend on drugs. They’ve got a fourteen year old son together. Violette wants Dominic to leave this woman, get off his addiction, get a real job and straighten out his life and I sit here and listen to her get on his case, which she says she’s been doing for years to no avail. Dominic is a quiet and courteous young man and listens compliantly and attentively, but given the circumstances and history Violette describes, I can’t help but wonder if anything will change. For one thing, he needs to keep off of his leg and give it the months of restful healing it looks like it deserves. Violette feels like all of her prayers and admonishments and attempts to help have been fruitless, wasted efforts, and she asks me to give a few words of advice and wisdom to this young man, and he listens respectfully while I tell him that his aunt and family love him and want earnestly for him to lead a fulfilling life, and that if he doesn’t take very special care of this wounded leg, it looks like it could be lopped off at the knee. How much can anyone say to someone about making smart choices, knowing full well that those choices are ultimately up to that person alone? For as long as the next few days that Violette will be here, she’ll be trying to steer Dominic into a sensible direction, despite her near sense of futility and despair, and all I can do is lend my ear and encouragement to her plight.

     Saturday morning, December twelfth. The floodgates of dreaming are lifted as one vignette follows another and as unresolved relationship issues find new understandings. I’m an apprentice to a team of professional car mechanics, and am faced with the task of lying on my back under a car trying to loosen some intractable nut from its frozen condition. Without damaging anything in the process of course, and if I succeed I will be accepted into the brotherhood of mechanics. Through trial and error and effort, I finally succeed, and when I roll out from beneath this car, I look across the bays of this garage and see my own white ’93 Ford Escort LX, my companion on the road for the last sixteen years, lifted up on the rack with all four wheels off, undergoing inspection and necessary maintenance for future driving capabilities. When updates are complete and she’s brought down road ready, my newfound maintenance companions and I head out for a test drive east on Alameda avenue as this surly, good-natured crew and I keep our eyes out for a place to buy beer for a celebration. I’m driving, and riding shotgun is a version of Daffy Duck, I kid you not.

     Switch to the mostly empty rooms of my Corrales Road hacienda, where I’m crash-padding amidst the left behind disarray. No one knows I’m here, until there appears seated on the floor, leaning against the wall, a mature younger woman whom I’ve never met, in a very sexually suggestive and receptive position, but not urgently so. She is crash-padding in one of the other rooms, and is here to help me tidy the place up, and the idea for developing intimacy is certainly here.

     Wander over to one of the other rooms which morphs into the central bedroom of the Rose family house, the home of my childhood friend Jim, and his three sisters Grace, Pat and Donna, all of whom were my boon companions of our childhood neighborhood. I’m still in the cleaning up and sorting out mode, and come to some small boxes of trinkets amongst which are some gems I select for safekeeping.

     Finally, in some manner or another, I come to a room in another venue where I meet a woman I’ve known, clothed in a simple but elegant dress, wearing a pair of glasses, and I’ve never seen her wearing glasses. The better for each of us to see each other with, I hope, my dear, for our brief but promising encounter just three years ago, crashed in a series of misunderstandings, and I’ve wished ever since that we could get back on an even footing, and know in my heart that we can. She manifests elegance in artistic and musical refinement, and in this dream, I see so clearly her sensitive reaching out. So now I must wait, until we can sit at her table again and share another bottle of her rare wine. Patience, Kiran observes, is the art of knowing that there is an unknown path towards the realization of a desired outcome, and of waiting for that path to make itself known.

     Who is this journal for? And how much of what I write here will I wish to share? While in my heart, I feel it is so necessary to write these things down!

As close to the heart of my feelings as I can get.

     Saturday afternoon, going back to yesterday afternoon when I spend three hours from two-thirty to five-thirty with Ray in his office. On the one hand, watching him interact with the various employees from the various sectors under his purview, who come to him with pieces of paper to sign, seeking directives and advising him about difficulties they face that need resolution. The glassed-in room has a full view of the reception desk and lobby, and the sense of a captain at the helm of his ship prevails.

     Ray is thirty-five with significant experience in this role. He’s only been here a couple of months and has ideas for upgrading this guesthouse into a more competitive position in the Chennai guest house market, but feels he is faced with a committee of conservative overseers unable to see how the establishment can and should evolve. He will soon be coming up for evaluation for contract renewal which is not the shoo-in I can see that it should be. He’s concerned for the outcome but not excessively so for he knows he can find a role in a more progressive institution. And he really does want a place somewhere where his ideas are appreciated. Meanwhile, requests keep coming in and decisions are always in order, and if there is anyone who can turn this place into an efficient operation, here he is.

     A man of unpretentious wisdom, Ray is clearly one of the people I came to India to meet. He tells a story of meeting with the Dalai Lama five years ago. He was with a group over in the Bangalore area, where there is a Tibetan monastery, relocation center and settlement, and he was not at that time even exactly sure who the Dalai Lama was. He was sitting in the back of the room nodding off when His Holiness gestured to single him out and beckon him to come forward. Dalai Lama asked Ray to ask any question, and Ray asked, how can you know if you have a loving relationship? Dalai Lama asked Ray if he was sure he wanted to ask that question of a monk who had nothing to do with women in that way. Ray answered yes, and after bowing his head in contemplation with a smile, Dalai Lama raised his head and spoke and told Ray, when the relationship is based on loving for one another, and not needing one another. Dalai Lama looked down again for a moment, then looked up and said, your grandfather has already told you this. And upon reflection, Ray recalled that indeed his grandfather had told him something like this when he was a little boy.

     Here in the YWCA guest house in Chennai, I meet a man who received this wisdom teaching directly from His Holiness, and feel very connected to the network and web of wisdom that touches the lives of all who seek for the truth of the underlying reality in the Heart we share. And signatures are sought after, and requests for a day off must be approved, and at one point an elderly couple comes down all in a rage about their internet connectivity problems, and their shouting and insults directed at Shri, the IT man whose office is next to Ray’s, are an awesome display of fire and brimstone and disrespect one would not expect from mature educated people. Yet here they are, unconscionably unreasonable and one can only wonder about what in their lives has brought them to this level. They leave in the rage they came down with, not having looked for a solution in the first place, but only a venue on which to vent the sadness in their hearts. Such is part of the world the manager and his trusted and competent assistant must deal with.

     Forgiveness . . . is the scent that a violet sends to the boot that has crushed it.

And it is only humans who tell their young Not to do things. Animals do not tell their young Not to do things. They only show them what to Do. By the time a child is five years old, its parents will have told it what Not to do a hundred and seventy-eight thousand times. What do you think the child will want to do?

     Monday morning, December fourteenth. In the top floor apartment of a very tall building, the interconnected rooms are residential and sparsely furnished, with a bit of the sense of storage room facility about them. The floor plan between the rooms reminds me of the word layout of an evolving scrabble board game. All the rooms have large open windows and breezes blow through rustling leaves of notebook paper and newspapers on the tables. No single room has any specific function, much like a series of interconnected guest house rooms similar to where I am now staying. I walk from one room to another, closing windows to shut out the disturbing, disruptive breezes, wondering how many rooms there are, and eventually come to a room with a table where a packet of Nepali rope incense twists are lightly smoldering. I feel that left unattended, they might start a fire, so I gingerly extinguish them, and return to my exploration of these mysterious empty rooms. A man appears in a doorway, a landlord or owner, and tells me he will let me stay longer for a reduced rate if I will look after the place. I tell him I’m not sure and will think it over since I do in fact feel somewhat confined here and feel the need for a measure of freedom to explore the outside surroundings at will.

     So here I sit in my guest house room and another day goes by, and another day of wondering when I will leave, where I am going, and why! Clearly, Pondy is next, perhaps the day after Christmas, which is still twelve days down the road. Plenty of nice, quiet streets for walking there, with comfortable coffee shops, restaurants and book stores and such, all with the ocean’s horizon nearby. In the right guest house to stay, I can visit for a couple of months, and my erstwhile urge to visit the Andaman Islands now seems like a needlessly expensive lark. From Pondy, I can return to Chennai in March, and take a flight directly to Kathmandu and hope they don’t have another earthquake there.

     Meanwhile, my stay at the guest house here is becoming an ashram-like existence, which is really all well and good. All that went by during my last four years in Albuquerque since I retired from teaching at ITT is brought into reflective focus. All of those people I met whose lives I became a part of, and they a part of mine, are set into a mobile, interactive diorama, along with all those other worlds I passed through during my last fifty years on the stage. I can call it something and say it had a purpose and a reason, and I can reminisce about all of those people who gave me cause to feel, and there are a lot of them, and every day they pass by, one after another, in my memory, from many years ago, or from one year ago, all memories have equal footing, and then I wonder anew, about who I will talk with today, and tomorrow, and for the next twelve days here, and for my time in Pondy, and for wherever I go after that. An endless river of conversations, going where, and why, I can hardly imagine. And imagine I surely do, knowing full well that all of these imaginings are like the clouds floating above in their continually changing formations.

     Tuesday morning, December fifteenth. Return to that multi-roomed apartment from yesterday only this time it is a dark and murky basement with rotten support beams and gaping holes in the wooden floor boards. As I explore this next best thing to a sewer for a home with my high school friends Frank and Bill, scanning rooms and hallways with dim flashlights, I come to a place where I can exit into the daylight above and advise my friends that I am going in search of some kind of help. After some wandering about, I meet one of my high school teachers, a member of an order of Catholic brothers who were not only scholars, but rational disciplinarians, emphatic without severity in their advice and guidance to our emerging teenage minds. He wants to know what me and my friends have been up to with the implication that it had better have been something worthwhile or else we are in trouble. I’ve no choice but to lead him back to the underground hovel not exactly sure that he will be satisfied. We must enter from ground level through a hole in the roof. He leads the way and we come to a room where my friend Frank has been industriously and productively making bricks. There are scores, nay hundreds of freshly made silver colored bricks lying about in various stages of drying, and Frank is putting the finishing touches on a barbeque pit he has made from some of these bricks. In addition, a large swathe of the floor has been laid out in preparation for a concrete pouring, and we are simply waiting for the mix to be prepared. Clearly, my right hand man has come through with flying colors.

     Now we go to a long, drawn out scene at a pond where a big fat toad sits mostly submerged with only his eyes and nostrils, the top part of his face, protruding from the surface of the still waters. On a rock on the shore nearby, a predator of the toad toys with and teases its prey and the toad stays its place and watches. The predator gets brave and more careless in its approach and gets right up under the toad’s chin. Slowly, the toad’s fat, sticky tongue emerges, and wraps around the clueless interloper. The toad opens its jaws wide and lifts this fresh meal into its cavernous mouth, where this still clueless creature, now recognizably a box turtle, cooperatively turns and walks right on into the throat of the toad, disappearing into the darkness within. An eye-opening image this morning for how patience and waiting can reap its reward. Through the act of doing seemingly nothing, the prey has consumed its predator.

     Another day at the guest house opens before me, and there is seemingly very little to do. Walked over to the supermarket last night, something on the order of a large American convenience store, and bought a box of twenty-four colored pencils. Lots of colors to play with now.

     Mother India. Eyes patiently watch across the still waters while I dance my dance, and query and question, and tease and surmise, and suppose and propose, and gesture and suggest, until, as I rest beneath her unwavering gaze,

She enfolds me in her embrace and takes me gently and entirely into the innermost sanctum of her comfort and understanding.