Onward to Rishikesh

This morning, seeing more temples was Exactly what I Didn't Want To Do, but I was convinced to my chagrin... well, I suppose I would've missed out on several animatronic "life of Krisna"s, and they were vaguely inspiring, so there you go.

Here in the internet place, while waiting the compulsory half hour for the guy to figure out how to connect you, a nice Hari Krisna got right into the talk, and subsequently tried to convince me that I should go to Mayura for Anapurna festival, mid-end of March... I wish I knew a little more about the HKs, but I suppose I could go across to Iskcon and watch for a little while...

Not very much more time in Krisna-land though, I am off to Rishikesh on a coach bus at 10. Tomorrow starts the "international yoga conference" which is both happy and suspect - happy to meet some "westerners", talk out some thoughts, hear some tales, maybe meet someone to accompany to the next spot, but suspect about mass packaged spirituality, as always. Shivananda is somewhere within the same complex on the Ganges, so I can always hop over there if need be - I am coming to respect Sivananda Ashram very much... if anything, they were only into sustaining themselves and those who wish to do their practice, not profiting, not converting.

I wrote a poem about music this morning, to share:

That Which Is
Let me sing you
Let me paint you with my voice
To make love to all your lines
Let me touch the universe
Just to let it know
That at this moment
It is all that exists
Let me place the light on the Mountains
And in the eyes
Let me join in your ecstacy
That which Is
And help you to create
What is already there.

... something like that.

I want to tell you my dream about the Ganga, but I am wrestling with the thought that it would only be in search of validation... so many dreams have been gaining significance in this beautiful land.

Hari Bol! :)

About pictures - I left the camera adapter in Amsterdam, but I am searching around, maybe someone has one - I wish I could show you this beautiful world... but I will come home with exactly 100 of the best photos to share.

Oh - and about "who are these people" - Shanta is a 50-smthg woman who I met in the kitchen at Sivananda in NY last year. She is my favorite swami's sister-in-law. She invited me incessantly to stop by when I went to India, so I went to her first in Bombay!

And about my plan - now it is "Study Music"... I have had numerous dreams, usually involving the rivers here. Sometimes with a voice that tells me something. One pair of dreams were waking up to song saying "go east" while watching the landscape move while in a boat going east, then the next night waking to a song saying "to study music". Others were about specific lives - as a Brahmin priest on the Ganges, as one of someones many wives... one just walking along the Yamuna... so I guess I've given a brief overview of the dreams... I don't really know exactly what I'm doing here, more here to find out.

Well, I must find some info, so I'm off. Next you hear I'll have seen the Ganga...

Tammy - stop by India! and where are the others? (Gill?) And others -sorry you have to register on here to post, email is great too, thanks... love to hear from you all... om om.

Mathura

I don't know if this will post - this ramshackle internet place is... wow. Anywho, I don't know if any of you are reading this anymore, please just say hi if you are... it is lonely seeing no comments (Thanks tammy and deena - good advice, and happy to hear from you!).

Where to begin - this place really makes me understand the absurdity that in the US we have made such order of nothingness. Yesterday we drove all around the city of Mathura to all of Krisna and Radha's childhood and birth places (so they say). I can't help but feel that Shanta and Whatserface's faith is being exploited around every corner. Who are these swami's presiding over these holy temples and asking for money? Shanta and sister don't know either. I have taken to looking, then wandering off, and I'll tell you, after three days of tagging along with the pilgrim thing, I could do without seeing another Krisna temple for a long long time.

But what was so beautiful to me were the villages along the roads - the cow patty jungles, hay houses, dark women in colorful saris carrying pots on their heads... so much texture, so much color....

India has a soundtrack - there is music playing, and noises all over. But occasionally one voice will pierce through right into the center of my chest and i will feel something i can hardly explain, but I will try -- It is as if you have caught the slight scent of your first home in the air and for some brief moment you are transported into the depths of lost memories, feelings, moments almost recognizable from their slight coloring entering the mind, but also still intangible, ungraspable, the whole moment just out of reach... but you now feel drawn to that scent, you want to remember what it was like - your first memory, your first moment, the closest thing to your center, your home, your true origin, the deepest place you could ever reach... all your life you are just searching for the purity of that first place and now... you can almost feel it.

Yesterday there was one bhajan playing from a speaker at a temple that did this... it made me think of Hemu's eyes... but not her eyes physically, just what they were saying, what they were teaching me in another language. Like when I was taking the singing classes in California from Shweta - I always felt that just being there with her I was learning something - in the air, above what I could see...

It is the music - something is in this music that resonates with my core and it is the most tangible feeling of depth I have ever felt. I have such a strong feeling that I am approaching something. Where? How? I don't know.

I went back to the Yamuna today for my first solo trek around the city. I got lost on the way back of course, but here I am - always. A week before coming to India I had a dream about the Yamuna... certain dreams are taking on new significance, and I want to tell you all about them, but not right now.

I think tomorrow I will take off for Rishikesh... I can't believe I have only just begun... I have no idea what to expect or what to think or anything. I'm just here, which is all any of us can ever say. I feel that more and more.

Please say hi if you have made it this far. love love.

Vrindavan and 6 Jains from Bangalore

I am now Virndavan... this place is a mix between a rocky dirt flume through 5oo BC, and "South of the Border" - the gaudy tourist trap on the way to FL, right on the Mason Dixon (in that fantastic for irony purposes only kind of way). I think it is difficult being with Shanta and her sister (whose name I have shamefully forgotten) because they have their Hindu agenda and sometimes I would rather go off and dance about with the Hari Krsnas or wander down the Yamuna - suddenly I was at the Yamuna today!!!! - or justtell the dude asking for money in one the holiestof holy temples that he can take his stinking receipt, it makes me sick.

But I must say, this is the most beautiful city I have ever ever been in, and for the reasons that most probably want to stay away - the poverty here doesn't bother the way it did in, like, brooklyn for example - because it is not a lonely poverty - but then again, I can't make generalizations like that, it is just my impression and comfort, but the homeless are families... the wander about, do laundry, justlike everyone else, and ina way, it is nice to be withouthere, because have money makes you feel a few terrible things - if you want to, that is.

The Jains agreed with me about the poverty though, and so I will back now and segue into the train ride to Mathura...

I'd never been in a sleeper train before - there are these compartments with cots stacked and people just sit and chat and do their things - it is much more frinedly here of course... a few hours into the ride (we're talking 20 hr ride) a beautiful girl in her 20s came over and asked where I am from, what is my good name, and where I am going because she and her friends are playing a game and want to know. She came so close to me with this gorgeous wide eyed face, western personal space invasion... i answered her questions and smiled. A few hours later I decided to go check outher compartment and who is playing this game?

Immediately upon walking over, a group of young people invited me to sit. Your name is rinif? (or something like that?) We got to talking and singing and discussing philosophy - they were mostly interested in my views on love, arranged vs. love marriage, and happiness...

They were three married jain couples, all 24 and 25 from Bangalore. They were so fun and adorable and interested and we had a loud boisterous time. I don'tknow why I can never think of american music when put on the spot, but put on the spot I was and came out with some ridiculous tunes. They all wanted to hear "Barbie Girl" and the theme from Titanic. And the girl who came over originally, Hemu, sang such amazing Hindu songs, I almost cried. And she looked me right in the eyes as she sang, as she did the whole evening with such fascination. It was totally moving.

Of course I got enough invitations to confirm that I will go to Bangalore for Holi at the end of March. I asked Hemu's hubby, Tej, to tell me all about Jainism, but all I got was a long lecture about the earth not being round and not moving, and all this, which was all good, but try to find the implications, I was at a loss there.

I have the feeling that, as the young people here dress so much like in America that my desire to "fit in" and wear less revealing things has probably made me look to them like someone in America who puts on tapered sweatpants, a fluorescent windbreaker with shoulderpads, and an "I love NY" hat... But not caring also comes much easier here, and seems to be the great big overwhelming norm.

Well, I was definitely in shock a few days ago, butI feel much better now... much much. I am lookingforward to what comes, although I feel very confused about hinduism, but I am getting more in touch with the aesthetic and the sounds and just all of it....

please write,

I love you all.

Mumbai

Well, I am here. I am sitting in Shanta's living room, finally able to connect the computer, and missing everyone so badly... it's funny how I didn't believe in jetlag, and I didn't believe in culture shock either, but they both exist... funny that.

Maybe it is because I am staying in a suburb with a native indian, but so far it really is not as scary as people have made it out to be... (people including a security guard at the plane check-in who tried to convince me to go anywhere else). I had one incident where a stray hand swept into the auto-rickshaw and copped a quick feel, and one incident with children begging, but so far so good. I know this isn't Delhi, though, and not the center of Bombay, so my guard is still up, but I trying to trust.

My first moments off the plane were completely awestruck, and filled with this indescribable feeling that India is alive in a way that goes beyond anything that is happening in front of your eyes... and my first night (last night) I could only sleep two hours, and kept thinking about how I never ever could have imagined this place. Never...

But today, after a surreal shopping experience, and three hours of puja and lecture on the Srimad Bhagavatam - in Hindi - I am tired, belly-aching, and I'll admit - a bit homesick. I have not seen a single light-skinned person in two days, and I'm often so quiet that the sound of my American voice shocks me.

I had a long think today about what I am doing in this crazy place, and came to the realization that I am here to try to find out why I want to be here.

Tomorrow I am going to Mathura - Krisna's birthplace - with Shanta and her non-english speaking, but very sweet, sister... and five days from now I am on my own.

I can't quite think with the Indian Soap Operas in the background, so I will close here. Please leave comments or emails, it is sooooo nice to hear from you all.

So much love....

Amsterdam to India

Om Namo Narayanaya

Thought it would be good to start out with some salutations to the preserver of the universe... if you will.

Hello dear ones. I wasn't sure I wanted to keep in touch, as I feel that "everyone has travelled... and so what." and back to thoughts of "art and/or communication being an exploitation of the experience". But then I remember that dream about the little art installation of a tiny kitchen being put up inside a building with an interestin pattern of growing hallways that I'd never noticed before, and the realization that art is a lense through which to see the patterns, beauty, uniqueness, and just-so-ness of what is already there. And not that this is art, so much, but I imagine it will allow me to frame things a bit ... so if you like, here you go.

Presently in Amsterdam click-clacking on my new (old) little ibook trying to maintain contact with my new company that has graciously allowed me two months of geographic freedom... while in the background Wendy reads anthro reading packet - recall anthro readings being extremely boring. she is one with endurance for academic garble - power to her. Amsterdam is my first and only experience of Europe - practically the world - though if you know me well, you know that I am likely to interject here that I mean in this present lifetime, of course.... One other note - I am so grateful for Wendy.

A-dam has canals, brick building galore, (and of course wooden clogs and legal pot - didn't get involved - though I somehow think that would have prepared me for India - gotten me into some revelatory mind state - oh YEAH, just BE, and Everything will be Fine!) But no. Feel lucky to have been able to witness the youth culture here - converse at length with some arty active ones - I feel it is somewhat more genuine here because it is not so prevalent as in the "States"... but I do notice that people do not look at each other here - I feel extremely unnoticed and unnoticing. Maybe this is part of the "tolerance", though it would be sad to assign that to indifference.

This is my last night here - tomorrow an epic saga will conclude (and another will begin) - I am going to India. Those of you who don't know, I have had major power issues about travelling to this region for ... let's see... 6 years now? Sad though, that I think I had to not register it in order to build up the nerve. And now I am not even excited, not scared, not anything... not even really aware at all... wish I could go back to that defiant angry scared and competely full-of-wonder me that cried on the phone with dad about studying abroad in Nepal and how he just didn't understand that I HAVE TO GO!!!! Well, writing that helped a bit. Tomorrow... I am going to India...

pictures: homepage.mac.com/omvidya