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.