Photo Finish

Jet lag owns me at the moment.  It can take me down anytime it pleases and keep me asleep for as little or as long as it likes.  My soul and body are finding it hard to be completely in Seattle, though they are no longer in India, as well.  I seem to exist in two realms, and if I had to name those realms they would simply be "Awake" and "Asleep."

I've been forced to do stuff today.  Responsible stuff like dealing with the bank and getting my car and it's dead engine towed.  The last two boxes that I shipped from India arrived and I unpacked them and felt like, "This is it.  I'm all here.  All arrived.  My adventure is over.  Tied up. Concluded.  The End."  I left everything out on tables for the day, though, so that I can process longer, leave the door ajar till I'm ready to close it for good and all.

I've also been uploading all my photos....or at least a grand amount of them.  There are still some areas that might be flushed out a little more when I have the energy to sort through the thousands of pictures I took.  As it is, I'm afraid, should you choose to peruse, you might also find yourself hunting a bit for the gems.  I don't have it in me to go through and label who is who and all, just now.  But if you've been following along, I suspect it might be a little like a scavenger hunt and you might just be able to put names to faces and illustrations to events.

So, I'm just gonna make a list of links here to galleries.  I hope you enjoy them.  I don't know if this is the last chapter, or just the last one for a few days, a week, what have you.  But I am giving myself permission to step away and linger in the moments of reconnection here in Seattle.

Once again, your company has been invaluable.  Each comment and private message sent has been cherished and made each step of this journey more rich.  So, thank you, thank you, thank you!

Now...The pictures:

Mumbai

Fort Cochin

Keralan Hill Stations

Lucky and Lakshmi

The Backwaters

Santiniketan

Hindu Village

Holi

Darjeeling

Varanasi

Jaipur and Agra (The Taj Mahal)

Joy Squared

I'm sitting in an almost dingy hotel room in Siliguri, West Bengal.  I awoke in time for the sunrise I might see if I were still in Darjeeling.  The view from my room here is of an abandoned, trash saturated lot and a highway.  I have no idea where the sun would be if I could see it.  The rain that started in Darjeeling two days ago, lingers here.  It is dreary.  When I arrived last night I checked in, went to my room, ordered room service and watched Richie Rich on HBO.  Sometimes you just have to check in and check out.

I'm hoping for good wifi in Varanasi.  Ha.  That's a funny thing to say.  I'm going to one of the spiritual epi-centers of the world and I'm hoping for good wi-fi.  That's funny because I've been noticing how my defense mechanisms are already kicking in even before  I get to Varanasi.  It's a place that makes non-woo-woo folks stand up and take notice of the aggressively energetic vibe.  I bought a string of beads yesterday and stood for 15 minutes deciding which one held the best ju-ju.  So, the woo-woo in me is more than a little nervous about encountering the ju-ju of Varanasi.

If I was a good spiritual pilgrim I might tell myself, "NO INTERNET IN VARANASI!"  Force myself to just be with the experience, process it internally, let it rummage through my psyche without any back up.  But, as I discussed in the last post, I am a sloppy spiritual pilgrim.

No.  That's not true. Well, maybe it's true.  But it's not entirely true.  There's another reason I want good wi-fi, besides the ability it gives me to check out of intense experiences when they become overwhelming, and that relates to why I started to say, "I'm hoping for good wifi in Varanasi," in the first place.

This reason is summed up perfectly by this picture:

That's the quote that greeted me on the balcony of The Classic Guest House in Darjeeling.  It made me laugh when I arrived there alone.  But the main reason I laughed when I saw the quote and didn't get a little bummed out in a "oh, right, thanks for reminding me that I'm ALONE and that I have NO ONE to share this trip with," kind of way was because I have so many of you to share this trip with via the internet.  And, it does, indeed, increase my joy.

Plus, I figure if all the monks I saw in Darjeeling can walk around with cell phones glued to their ears, I can have my electronic outlet and still be a spiritual pilgrim.

I started to write a very short post in which I was going to share with you these few pictures of young monks playing cricket in Darjeeling.  You see, I don't have good enough internet to just upload ALL my pictures (maybe in Varanasi! See where I'm going with this?).  But these few pictures bring me particularly great joy.  And I wanted to share them, the pictures, and it, the joy.

Officially Worthwhile

I've been tip-toeing through the last few days.  No confident Katherine Hepburn strides whisking me up and down the mountains like the first few days of my Darjeeling sojourn.  Instead, I feel like I'm in a constant state of walking meditation, with little breaks to eat, or sleep (in that case, long breaks), or to read.

There is something about this place that feels instructive, like it's rearranging things deep down, scratching an itch that I can't even feel.  In that way, Darjeeling puts me in mind of Sedona, Arizona.  When I stopped there on a drive across country several years ago, I remember a tour guide saying that something about the energetic make up of the place often caused people to up and completely change their lives, though while you are there it just feels like a good place to visit, comfortable, beautiful, peaceful.  I think Darjeeling has that same power...to erode unnecessary dams lurking in the subconscious.

This morning I woke up at about 4:50 in the morning and sat watching the sunrise over the mountains.  There were a few more layers of ridges visible than I'd previously been able to see and as I sat there the horizon began to stretch even farther and farther back while more mountain tops started to emerge from the steel gray light of early morning.  It was like watching a very large Polaroid photo develop over the span of a couple of hours.

I had no idea if the new ridges were the famous Kanchenjunga....the third highest mountain in the world..which lives just up, or is it down, the road from Darjeeling.  Later I took a walk and found an official Kanchenjunga "view point" with an official and actual view of the mountain and realized I'd only been seeing it's foothills from my balcony.

Three of Kanchenjunga's 5 sacred peaks

I descend this much smaller mountain tomorrow, down to Siliguri where I will sleep for one night and then I will get up early on Wednesday and take two planes, the first to Delhi, the second to Varanasi, the famed city by the Ganges where pilgrims go to bury their dead and to pray for their ancestors.  It is, by almost all accounts, one of the most energetically powerful places on the planet.  I just found out this morning that I will be there on the full moon, which makes me both more excited and more apprehensive.

Normally, the cycles of the moon are very important to me.  But here in India, I have rarely been able to see the moon and have felt a bit distanced from it's magic.  It is either some deep instinct at work, or pure luck, that I will end up in that holy city, in the final days of my trip to India, on the full moon.  Just as it was pure luck almost three years ago when I finished up my trip to Europe with two full moon days on Iona, another of the planet's most potent sacred sites.

Just like the last trip at about this juncture of things, two plus weeks from my return date, I am beginning to feel out of sorts with my journey, the fact of it, the "why" of it, the "what has it all been for" of it.  There is something in the gearing up to go home that makes me both want to crawl deeper into myself, into my quiet, unsociable places, and also makes me feel itchy in my skin, agitated, like a bottle of fizzy water that has been shaken up and is a little nervous about what will happen when the top is taken off.

I have started to wonder if I've done/am doing all that I can to wring what it is I was supposed to get out of this trip.  Is it enough to be here in Darjeeling, soaking in the place, the quiet, the mountains?  I have seen a few monasteries, lit incense, spun prayer wheels.  Even today, I went to the Hindu temple on the hill to ask Ganesha for safe travels in the coming week and to thank him for the safe travels I've already had.

Though I believe enough in the Ganesha energy that has permeated this journey, I know I am a sloppy devotee.  Not like the serious folks, who pause whenever they walk by a shrine to say a little prayer.  They are never unaware of where images their god or goddesses live on their daily routes and they pause at every single one, bend their head, fold their hands, say a prayer, then touch their fingers to their third eye and heart and walk on.  Then there are the Buddhist holy men dressed in red and gold, the mysterious flagellates wearing dreadlocks and beating drums when they aren't beating themselves, and the Muslim men walking backward down the mountain in a slow steady gait holding a flag to be filled with alms.  None of these people are sloppy devotees.

I've also seen lepers and cheerful men with only half a body who greet me everyday with a smile and a hand over their heart, who strike me as being equally, if somehow not more, wise than others who flaunt their devotion to a God, or gods, or prayer.  These half formed and wasting men must always bear their crosses, carry their burdens, their days are filled with endless supplication.

But my personal pilgrimage, my supplication has mostly been only to the place, India and the smaller places in it, to the journey, to the getting here.  If I have prayed at all, besides the small trips to someone else's shrines, it is at the sunrise, at the first fresh rays of the day, and then my prayer was one of witnessing and not of supplication, not a trial of hardship, only of awareness:  Look the sun is rising, there is a beautiful fog settled in the valley, I haven't seen that ridge before.....

I've begun to yearn for some kind of epiphany, some cosmic light bulb that will tell me what this trip has been "about".  I know that might seem ridiculous.  Like you, I can look back and see so much that has happened that will change and shift my life, so much light that has already been shed.

I think it is the impending return to the life I had before India that makes the need for some kind of grand "A-Ha" moment more urgent.  I want something solid to hold onto, something I can take back to America other than photos and souvenirs that will make it all more Officially Worthwhile.

But time is slipping away.  Mumbai and Kerala seem like places I visited in a dream.  Even Santiniketan, which I left a week ago, is fading quickly into the mist of maya and illusion.  I can't say Seattle feels that much more real.  But it's where I will go and settle into again, where I will gather about me the familiar, the long-standing, the well-loved.

I don't just want to step back into my old life, to let the way things were become the way things are, again.  So, my steps here have become more tentative, slow, even.

**************** 

There is something in this post, a thread that I cannot quite grasp.  As of this sentence, it is a new morning, the sun has just come up again, though it is still hiding behind the dense cloud cover that has shrouded the mountains in their heaviest get up I've seen.

I went to sleep hoping that the thread that I cannot grasp would make itself available in my dreams.  I know it has to do with the mountains coming and going, like clarity, like vision, like epiphanies that lie somewhere just on the other side of the cloud cover.

My dreams were no help.  I dreamt of an ex who often pops into my night journeys.  I must miss him and love him more than I admit in my waking life.  I also watched some bit of Indian English detente happen concerning the impending Royal Wedding.  And, perhaps most interestingly, there was a lad who had a giant prayer wheel and a woman had stuck a sign on the wheel that said, "Rage -> Morgan."  It was, in dream logic, a rather beautiful way for the lad to release his rage at me, though I don't know why he was so angry, by releasing prayers into the universe instead.  He had a long baton that he was to reach out and pull the handle on the prayer wheel whenever he was feeling inwardly provoked.  The wheel would spin and his rage would be translated into prayer.

While I am writing of dreams, outside up on the Hill above me a scene from my pre-India dream has suddenly materialized.  A woman with a deepish, throatiesh voice is leading a call and response song.  Unlike my dream of so many weeks ago, there are cymbals and drums accompanying the roving band of devotional singers.  Now that I listen more closely, I believe they might be Hari Krishna's, or at least "Hari" is being invoked regularly.  At the Temple on the hill where I went yesterday to ask Ganesha for safe travels, the bells are being rung by devotees doing their early morning puja.  Joggers are jogging away their stresses and fears.  The custodian at the church school below me is opening the doors and readying the sanctuary.

I search for meaning with my finger tips on the keyboard, while catching moments to look up at the clouds, angel clouds, lined with white and holding thunder and rain to be released at a later time (will my prayers also be released?).  The sun has almost broken through the dense haze to make itself a clear, round presence in the sky.  It's rays, distant only minutes ago, now warm my cheeks and arms.  That's all.  That's hopefully enough.

Pulled Into Wakefulness

April 9th sits in me like a time-bomb of fatigue and cloudiness.  Eight years ago today my dad died, and even though the anniversary always delivers an explosion of sense-memory muscle sadness, I somehow manage to forget about it in the days leading up.  Of course, my soul can play tricks and sometimes sends it's annual gift on the 8th, just to mess around with me, so that I wake up on the 9th feeling almost giddy with relief.  This year, I'm in a totally different time zone, so I think my psyche decided to play it safe and spread the heavy feeling out over the 8th and 9th.

I thought it was just all the exercise I'm getting and the elevation, but after I had almost 12 hours of sleep last night and was still unable to stand for fear of falling over, I took a look around in my heart and mind and suddenly realized that it was April 9th and probably nothing in the world was going to make me feel like getting out of bed today, not even the Himalayan mountains.

I did, though, get out of bed.  I hemmed and hawed most of the morning away.  Crawled back into bed and tried my darndest to let my body sleep if that's what it really wanted.  But then the hotel decided that today was the day it was going to clean and paint the tin roof right over my head, so I took that as a sign, made myself get dressed and vacated the room.

Once outside I couldn't decide where to go and eventually took the path of least resistance and went off in the direction of the Tibetan Refuge Center which was supposed to be near the zoo where I had gone yesterday and therefore should be fairly easy to find.  After walking downhill for an hour, which meant I was looking at walking up hill for two, I found the center and had a good look around.  It is a working and living refugee center, not a tourist place.  Theres not a lot of showmanship involved.

But there were craftspeople of all kinds hard at work.  I found the weaving especially fascinating.  I also found the photos of the first refugees and the picture of the woman who founded the Center moving, to say the least.  It was the second day in a row that I'd stood in a museum looking at people I hadn't heard of before, crying for their bravery and chutzpah.  Yesterday, I'd been to the Everest Museum and wept for all the souls who'd clawed their way to the top.  So much daring and living really gets my juices going these days.

Maybe it's the specter of death that looms for me at this time of the year that makes me cherish the bold way that some souls spend their lives.  That April 9th 2003 is etched in my mind.  I remember the early hours of the morning sitting on the floor with my dad cradled in my arms.  He'd fallen out of bed for the second time and Kit, my step-mom, and I couldn't lift him back on our own.  So, while we waited for the fire-truck to arrive, my naked father, covered with a blanket, his body swollen with cancer, laid against my chest and I tried to soothe him as best I could.  When the firemen showed up, I remember the absurdity of the situation and especially the inanity of my thoughts which went something like, "Wow, firemen really are handsome."

About 12 hours later, I sat on my dad's bed, holding his hand, unaware that he had so little time left.  He was lying awkwardly on his stomach.  We were alone in the house.  He'd been vomiting dried blood which had put me in a panic.  I had called the hospice nurse earlier, cleaned him up as best I could and now waited for her to arrive.  My dad was foggy and as far I knew he hadn't said anything coherent since the evening before when he quite clearly told me he wasn't going to eat dinner because he didn't "want to be part of this fiasco anymore."

But something suddenly got my dad's attention and his eyes focused and he appeared to be listening to someone I couldn't see.

I said, "Who do you see, dad?"

He didn't say anything.

Holding his hand, I thought, "I bet your dad is here.  I bet that's who is talking to you."  And with that came the sudden realization that my dad and I were far from being alone in the house, the bed was surrounded by people who'd gathered in the mist between life and death to give my dad a helping hand.

I thought to my dad, but I did not speak, "It's ok Dad, we are all here."

And my dad smiled, as if he'd clearly heard.

You would think that with spirits around the bed and dried blood, I'd know the end was near.  But it just didn't occur to me, nor to Kit. It wasn't until around seven in the evening when the second hospice nurse of the day came to bring dad a hospital bed and to catheterize him to make him comfortable that we found out.  The hospice nurse told us as gently as possible that what we'd been witnessing over the last 24 hours were the last stages of living, or is it dying?  She told us gently, but she still couldn't completely hide her astonishment that we'd been unaware.  She was sure it was a matter of hours, 7 or 8 at the most.

Once he'd been made comfortable, my dad relaxed and set about calling the ferry man.  Kit went to change so that she, too, could be comfortable and curl up next to my Dad.  We thought we were in for a long night keeping vigil.  I sat next to him holding one hand and keeping my other hand, inadvertently over his heart.  While I had him to myself, I sang Dites-Moi because the song had always reminded me of him.  He'd taught it to me in the third grade and I'd taught it to my french class at school, with his help. I also took the moment to tell him that it was ok for him to leave and that I would be ok.  Kit came in and held him almost in a spooning position and he must have felt safe and ready because he took the plunge within an hour and stepped over to the other side.  I was rather amazed at the speed with which he left; I’d imagined it would be harder.

My dad had found little to make his last months worthwhile.  Some people accept the end is near and try to wring what joy they can out of the time they have left.  Not my dad.  He tried to take cancer as a sign that living was and always had been a cruel joke and only suckers pretended that their heart had been in it all along.  Of course, my dad was just scared and angry like any human being would be.

But those of us who tried to comfort him and to care for him found it exhausting and somewhat devastating that he so stubbornly refused to find anything joyful in the time that he had left.  Just about the only time he would perk up was when he'd convinced himself that the cancer was fightable or that the palliative chemotherapy he was getting was really curative, which was equally devastating to those of us who recognized the truth.  My dad mostly faced his death sentence as, well, a death sentence and pretty much stopped living the October they'd opened him up to cut the cancer out of his liver only to close him up when they realized that there wouldn't be any liver left if they took out the cancerous parts.

There was a spring storm shaking the trees outside, the night he completely closed up shop.  Just like there is today in Darjeeling.  Here there is thunder and lightening and the tumultuous sound of heavy drops hitting the clean tin roof over my head.  On that April 9^th, in Norfolk, the storm had come and gone, but the wind that had ushered it in still swept through the trees while I sat on the curb waiting for Mutt and Jeff, the two guys out of central casting, one tall and thin, the other short and fat, both dressed in black leather coats and wearing deeply sympathetic expressions, to take my dad away to the funeral home.  I sat that night and wept into the wind, letting nature rage for me, while I began the long process of letting go.

During the six months that my dad was knowingly sick with cancer, he repeated the desire several times that I should go to China before he died.  He'd recently been with Kit and it had knocked his socks off.  He wanted to be able to talk about it with me before he moved on.  I knew it wasn't going to happen in his lifetime, but it was unbelievably sweet that he felt so strongly, and naively, about the trip.  It was the one sign of life he really clung to. 

I don't know how my dad felt about India.  We never talked about it.  He never came here.  But I think he would have liked it. 

After I walked down the mountain today to the Tibetan Refuge Center, I was not looking forward to finding my way up.  As I started to leave the compound a white pick up truck was going out.  I don't know why, but I looked up just in time to see an old Tibetan woman madly waving down at me from the third level of the compound; when I made eye contact she made a motion as if she was driving a car and pointed frantically to the white pick up and back to me.  I, in turn, waved madly at the pick up which was almost out of the gate; it stopped.  I looked up at the lady and she motioned for me to get in.  I asked a kid who was standing in the bed of the truck if they were going to Darjeeling and if I could get a ride.  They were and I could, so I hopped in the back.

The white pick up was the communal truck for the people who lived on site at the refugee center to get up to Darjeeling, which I would soon realize I'd actually walked out of on my descent down the mountain.  The young man in the pick up bed stood next to me chatting, while we held on for dear life as the truck careened up mountain roads, twisting and turning and taking us on a wild, but free, ride.  We stopped to pick up some Tibetan girls who were headed in our direction to play basketball, so for a while there were several of us standing behind the cab, holding on and talking while small town, Himalayan, India whizzed by.

As we sped along, my fatigue fell out of me onto the side of the road and I was filled instead with ecstasy, clear-headed joy and vitality, not to mention gratitude for that woman who made sure I didn't try to walk all the way back to Darjeeling on my own.  It was a very long ride.

It was one of those travelling mercies that mean more than the simple facts.  A stranger, a refugee from her own land, had noticed me, noticed my need, my weariness and made sure I was given swift and safe passage back to my temporary home.  I was not just standing in a pick-up going up a mountain road to Darjeeling, which, of course, is spectacular enough.  I was being pulled back into wakefulness. 

Now the storm here in Darjeeling has passed, the clouds linger, but the birds are singing again, the motorbikes have taken to the newly washed roads, life goes on.  Tomorrow I suspect I will wake up refreshed and energized, ready, once again, to put my heart back into the living.

My Dad and I in London or Paris.

Who do I have to speak to around here?

I find everything about my bed here at the Classic Guest House in Darjeeling delicious.  It is soft.  It has two lovely down pillows, to go with it's heavy down comforter.  I even find it's companionless emptiness perfect.  It's just me and the pillows and the comforter and whichever book I'm struggling to stay awake to read.  Part of what makes the bed so sinkable into is the crisp air of the mountains which remains constantly, despite it's minor daily fluctuations, at the perfect temperature for sleeping, or napping, or for having a lie down.

Right now it is one seventeen in the early morning.  I woke up about forty minutes ago, I'd guess, after falling fast asleep, without my supper even, at about eight.  I laid in bed, clinging to a dream that was very similar to dreams I've been having every night for the last week or so.  I don't really remember what goes on in this recurring scenario, but I can recall enough of the essence of feeling to know it is the same.

Some part of my sleeping mind is searching for a way to thank the gods, the universe, I don't know, maybe India itself, for this journey I've been on, for that's what I seem to be trying to do every night.  But the rules of this place I go to in my dream world are both specific (I cannot go to or thank anyone directly) and vague (I cannot go to or thank anyone directly).

When I wake up I have the sense that I've had to seek out or been sought out by an ancient Buddhist woman who speaks Hindi, or is it practices Hinduism, who will find the Indian equivalent of a Pagan who will tell me what shrine/mountain/deity/person to speak to/ have supper with/ study under/ genuflect before.

Some nights I am walking in circles where everyone is living in dire poverty, while other nights we all might as well be rajahs.  The last image that I recall from tonight's pilgrimage was of a door, set in a mountain wall, the door was painted with chipped blue paint, the surrounding earth was covered in a deep green lichen or moss.  In this world, money was irrelevant, what mattered was the Earth.  No one spoke English, but some other mother tongue that I've long forgotten in my waking brain.

Outside, while I type, the chorus of wild dogs is hard at work keeping the silence of the mountains at bay.  I am struck, not for the first time, by the lack of airplane noise which, after my first week in Asia spent sleeping under the flight path of the Mumbai airport, has been the one major man made noise pollutant that I've not encountered much of here in India.  Cars and motorbikes rule the motorized, mechanized sound waves of daily life in this part of the world.  But, at night, the dogs, who sleep so much of the day, reign supreme.

A cloud has buried the valley below me, while the stars above are shining brightly.  There may be mountains standing at attention tomorrow after all, despite the previously scheduled rain front which has been moving in ever so slowly since I arrived on Tuesday afternoon.

I was rather hoping for a day of rain, an excuse to sit in my delicious bed and read without feeling guilty.

If the sun does shine, I shall have to gather up the strength to put on my shoes and to go out wandering again, searching much like I do in my sleep these nights, for some hidden place within myself, and without, where I can hold the abundance of beauty that India keeps throwing in the path like constant bundles of fireworks. I may find myself at a Buddhist monastery or a Hindu shrine offering up my thanks to someone elses deities or Bodhisattva, hoping that my message will reach the right office, get to the person or people in charge.

Or, maybe, I'll just sit on my balcony looking out at the mountains, and talk to God directly.

Oceanically Soothing

The mountains of India, at least this one, are incredibly peaceful.

This isn't entirely true.  Darjeeling province has been locked in a battle of wills with the government of West Bengal for 100 years.  Darjeeling wants to be its own land, Gorkhaland, and they have been protesting and getting killed on and off for decades in order to make their point.

With elections coming up in a few weeks, the protests have been both increasing and becoming more peaceful.  Apparently, in mass non-violent resistance, the whole province has refused to pay its electricity bill for the last two months, so, not surprisingly, West Bengal turns the power on and off at will.  On the way up the mountain, our jeep had to stop, along with dozens of other jeeps carrying tourists up the road, for a large group of students who were blocking the pass in a bid for an independent Gorkhaland.  Only a few weeks ago, this agitation would have become so serious that we would have been forced to turn around and to go somewhere else for the night, or a few days.  But with the election coming up, no one dares to take things that far.

But, as I started to say at the top there, other than that rather major divisive movement, Darjeeling is the essence of peace.  I have been wandering up and down the mountain, investigating temples of different faiths.  My legs are sore from all the climbing hither, thither and yon.  But my spirit is getting a lot of well deserved rest.  I'm not fighting off advances from men.  The gents here are so much more respectful.  Not even the hawkers act like stawkers.  I can roam with a free and easy feeling.

Where the people in the plains have a lean and hungry look, a weariness that comes from sweating all day to make mere rupees, the people of Darjeeling have a vigor, a round heartiness that springs from the temperate climate and the heaps of exercise that comes with living on one step of the mountain, working on another, and praying on yet a third.  Even the wild dogs are fluffier, fatter, and, well, cuter.

Of course, so many of the folks here are refugees from Nepal and Tibet, or their forefathers were.  So genetically, the stock is different.

The faces are wider, the hips bigger, the average height a little taller.  I must admit, truth be told, the men are a great deal more to my liking in these parts.  For one thing, I don't tower over most of them.  Plus, they remind me, many of them, of Chow Yun Fat, and that can only be a good thing.  How nice that I can look at them here without fear of being hastled.  It's a little more like Europe that way; there are, upon occasion, mutual looks, moments of appreciation, but never a feeling that a line will be crossed.

Though the locals in Darjeeling must deal with poverty like their brothers and didi's down the mountain, they carry themselves with a more affluent, well tended air.  Even their houses, which are as small and ramshackle if one looks closely, have a more smartly aesthetic look, or at least one that I gel with more naturally.  Here the locals paint their homes in bright colors and surround them with flowers of even more color, taking the time, energy, and money to even build risers so that the potted plants can produce and multiply.  Instead of exuding an air just this side of desperation, the Gorkha people take what they have and work to make it beautiful.

In some ways, Darjeeling reminds me of Seattle.  Both are surrounded by mountains which come and go depending on the weather.  I've made peace with the fact that I might spend a week here and never clearly see the famous peaks that live shrouded in fog and which will be further obscured in the next few days by the impending storm front.

Both towns are also very lush and green, home to evergreen and deciduous trees that keep the land feeling alive and vibrant even in the harshest winters and the hottest summers.  Last night I discovered that there is a fountain at the head of the town square which I live next to.  The fountain is only turned on for a few minutes every night for water conservation purposes.  But this fountain jumps and plays the way ours does back at Seattle Center and, but for the cool temperatures, people would, I have no doubt, be playing in them the same way.

I haven't spent much time in a mountain town.  For, though Seattle is surrounded by two mountain ranges, I think of it as being closer to the water, and so a sound-to-ocean town.  I've always considered water important to my living arrangements.  India is challenging that assumption in all sorts of ways.

Something I've noticed about this mountain town is that at night it is a lot like an ocean town, well, an ocean town on the side of a mountain.  You see, the lights come on after dark (if West Bengal is feeling beneficent) and then there is created this divide between town and the great vast swath of darkness that is the uninhabitable Himalayas.  Just like at night on the edge of the ocean, there is light were there are people and then there is the darkness which speaks of nature and the unknown and the places where one might get swallowed up if they didn't stay safely in the warm glow of civilization.

I find that even in the daytime, I am staying close to home more than I'd expected to.  I go out walking in the early afternoon for a few hours, then again at night, but my body is loving this restful vibe, this cool clean air and it begs to sit and to just be.  Often, it demands to sleep.  Last night I went to bed at 9.  This morning I missed the sunrise by a few seconds and awoke at 5:40 to see it fully floating above the dim and hazy mountain peak that lies just across the valley from my little hotel.

I had hoped to see all the sunrises here, but I trust that my dreaming mind and soul and my weary limbs have smarter, better plans and are using the rest to gather steam for the days ahead.

"This is my story, this is my song".

The road to Darjeeling is not fun.  A narrow, winding affair with long, steep drops on one side or the other, and potholes bigger than bathrooms, the route is barely wide enough for two cars, and often isn't wide enough for the caravan of jeeps going up the mountain to pass the caravan of "Goods Carriers" coming down the mountain.  The journey reminded me of being in a bumper car that could suddenly turn into an old wooden roller coaster, I was alternately being slammed against the side of the car only to recover and discover a drop outside my window that induced instant and terrifying moments of vertigo.

Happily, besides the bruise on my upper right shoulder from constantly being thrown against the side of the jeep, all my distress disappeared the minute I walked into my cozy hotel room and saw the view outside my balcony door.  Though shrouded in haze, the Himalayan mountains lurk just across the valley from the Himalayan mountain I am actually standing on.  I can't say that word enough: Himalayan, Himalayan, Himalayan.

This is the view from the other side of the hill I am on.

When I was traveling a few years ago in the British Isles, I took a detour briefly to Paris and Italy with my Mom and Sister.  We spent a week in the Cinque Terra, falling in love with the small seaside towns that hug the lingurian coast.  After my mom and sister left, I decide that I would go to Rome for a few days on my own.  It was a whimsical and spontaneous decision.  I got on a train, stopped in Florence on my way, then landed in the ancient city of Nero and the Pope and Michelangelo.

After dropping my bags off at the hotel, I grabbed a map and rushed off to see the Colosseum before it closed for the night.  When I was safely ensconced inside the gate, I took my first deep breath, Whew, I'd made it!  Then I looked around and realized, "Holy Hell, I'm in the COLOSSEUM.  IN ROME."

I think I went into shock, then I started crying, joyful, marvelling tears.  I didn't know it consciously, but I guess some part of me never expected that I would see such a thing, such an ancient, fabled place.  Yet, there I was, touching stones that held gladiators and Ceasers and centuries of history.

I feel that way here.  Unglued by the enormity of the moments that I am living.  Me.  Little me is sitting in a chair looking out at the fabled Himalayan mountains.  I am practically spitting distance from Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and China.  If it clears up enough, I might get to see Everest.  No matter if it does, I know it's there.  I could beat ground with my fist and imagine the reverberations reaching that famous summit.

I've been waiting for these feelings, this moment, these moments of awe since I arrived in India.  But so far, the country has felt so comfortable (culture shock elements aside), that I haven't really been awestruck.  It made sense to be in Kerala, in Santiniketan, even in crazy, nerve-addling Mumbai.  But the grandeur of these ancient mountains have struck me to the core, like my head was in a bell and the heavens came along and finally rang it....GONNNNNGGGGGGG....WAKE UP.....YOU ARE IN INDIA!!!!!!!!!

After sitting for a few minutes soaking in the reality of where I was yesterday, I decided to go for a walk to get a lay of the land.  I found myself at the base of a hill with several roads to choose from.  I asked a policeman for help in deciding.  He pointed out a Buddhist monastery at the top of the hill, which I could now see with his help.  Thousands of prayer flags were coloring the grove of trees that hugged the peak. That seemed like an auspicious place to start my Himalayan pilgrimage.

Climbing up into the woods, I was utterly enchanted by the bright colors sailing on the wind, hanging from branch to branch to branch. A calmness descended the further I ascended.  Bells clanged in various spots hidden in the maze of flag and forest.  Eventually I reached a shrine and was startled to discover not Buddha, but Kali.  Another held Ganesha, then Shiva, then Krishna, then Hanuman.  "This is the strangest Buddhist monastery I've ever seen," I said to myself.

Many people were praying at the temple of their choice, or making the rounds of each, ringing the bell before and after to send their wishes and thanks up to the Gods.  I made an offering to Santoshi, a face of Durga, for my friend Finn who loves Durga.  I also gave my thanks to my friend and benefactor along this journey, Ganesha, especially for the safe travels up to Darjeeling.  I said hello to Hanuman for an old High School friend who is partial to the monkey God.

Just outside the gate there was a man who was mute.  He could only groan to get my attention.  I had passed him a couple of times in my attempts to procure incense to offer up to the gods, and each time he had made quite a racket in my direction.  At first I thought he was telling me that I needed to remove my shoes.  Then, he lifted his various jackets and pointed to his privates, not in a lewd way, but in an obvious, and increasingly frantic, attempt to communicate something.  I decided that he was telling me that a woman was not allowed in the area I was headed.  I turned around.  On my way back down to my hotel, he started up again and a sweeper woman explained that he was mute and he was asking for money.  I asked her if it was good to give him some and she said, "Yes."  I walked back up to the man and gave him 10 rupees.  I thought this would quiet him, but he started up again with his vigorous yelps and yawps and pointed once again to his privates then up to the enclave of temples, then down again at himself.

I walked away and asked the sweeping woman what he might be saying.  She said, "He is telling you that he will send a prayer for you up to God."  I didn't ask her about the obvious reference to male and female private parts, but decided to trust that whatever this mute man needed to say to me and then to God was for the most benevolent purposes; I started home and left my faith in his prayer.  Turns out that there used to be a Buddhist monastery on this hill, eons ago.  Now it is a place of worship for all religions.  Anyone is welcome.  All prayers are heard, mine, the mute man's, anyone's.

After a long day of travel, preceeded by a not-so satisfying sleep on the over-night train, I was dead asleep by 9 o'clock.  I closed all my curtains so that the morning light wouldn't rouse me, put in my ear plugs and set off for a restorative visit to dreamland.  Once there, I dreamt that I was back home for a visit.  My mom was there.  I discovered that I'd left a pile of clothes out and wanted to put them away before I came back to India.  But I grabbed a few pairs of undies because the five pair I brought with me on this real life trip are close to retirement.

I woke up to the gentle sound of drumming and chanting.  I had no idea what time it was.  With the curtains drawn I didn't know if it was late morning or early.  I listened to the drums.  Then a message came into my brain, loud and clear: They are drumming the sunrise.

I got up and wrapped myself in a blanket and opened the door to my balcony.  The mountains were shrouded in a pink and purple haze.  I actually couldn't tell if the sun was up somewhere behind me or what time it was.  I hadn't arrived till late last afternoon, so I wasn't sure yet where east and west were from my little view.  I sat in a chair and looked around to see if I could see the monks (it must be monks, right?) who were drumming.  When I turned back to look at the horizon, I sliver of sun had arrived over one painterly peak.  The hidden monks WERE drumming in the arrival of the sun.  I turned my chair to face the sun directly, to welcome it with my open heart and my full focus.  The drumming and chanting remained steady and was such that I was certain the sun and the drum were in perfect sync, moving at the same pace.  I'm not sure, but it could be that those monks were pulling the daylight out of the pocket of night.

The last few hours I've been sitting on my balcony, eating breakfast, sipping coffee and watching Darjeeling wake up.  I called my mom on skype and checked in with the western world.  Turns out my mom had a dream about me last night and in it, clothes had also been a factor.  I think we met each other in dreamland.  It wouldn't surprise me.  I am in the Himalayas, therefore anything can happen.

Below me is The Assembly of God Church School and starting about an hour ago, boys and girls of all ages have been streaming down the winding mountain road under my perch to congregate for a day of learning.  After everyone arrived, they all lined up in rows, single file and began to sing.  I couldn't make out all the words, but I did make out the refrain, "This is my story, this is my song."

I suppose I have to face up to the fact that I am in Darjeeling.  I am in the Himalayas.  These things are part of my story, this is, indeed, my song.

Mope-aholics Anonymous

India is hot.

India has been hot since I arrived, don't misunderstand.  Compared to "my" moderate Seattle and to the parts of the globe that have been ravaged by winter over the last two months, India has kept warm and cozy, at least the parts I've been in.

But sometime in the last week the sun shifted in such a fashion that even the way its rays shine onto the ground have a different, more aggressive slant to them.  The afternoon air turns almost white with glare.  Now, it is more judicial to close the house up entirely around 1 o'clock to keep the fresh heat from making the old heat trapped in the house utterly unbearable.

Sweating is quickly becoming the natural order of things.  Chaffing follows.  Sitting still, if at all possible, ensues.

This is only the beginning.  India will continue to get hotter as the days tick by.  April, I'm told, will be unfathomably hot.  If it is, at the rate I'm going, I shall have to take 19 tiny showers a night just to stay cool enough to sleep.  I'm already up to three 30-second spritzes between 10 when I go to bed and 6 when I get up for the day.

My mood seems to be reflecting, in a distorted fun-house fashion, the change in temperature.  I am irritable, melancholy, quick to judge.  Perhaps this is because the heat is affecting my digestion and for the first time since I arrived in India  I've had a more than fleeting bout of travel related stomach ailments. Maybe it's because Martin has written to say that he has decided to "move on" despite the fact that I "have awakened feelings in" him.

It could just be that my time here in India is growing short.  I find that I am occasionally beset with fits of inner conflict about going back to my life in Seattle.  Certain moments, I simply cannot imagine it.  Other times, especially when people get to talking about the Indian government and the absolutely ass-backwards way that certain programs, health, education, and human services especially, are run, or not run as the case may be, I feel sure that I would go mad if I tried to make a life here.

One small example involves the process of adoption.  If an orphan can be adopted, which isn't always the case for some reason, it takes at least two years for a child to move from the chaotic orphanage to their new home despite the fact that they have been assigned to a couple that has been approved and is waiting to nurture and to love them, not to mention able to relieve the state of the burden of feeding and clothing the child.  I defy anyone to satisfactorily explain to me how this is a good or wise or logical or prudent or humane way to do things.

I told you I was grumpy.

I didn't even go to teach this morning.  My stomach, and my emotional barometer, felt too delicate.  Like the humidity in West Bengal which can rise from 30% to 70% at the drop of a hat or fall just as quickly, my constitution threatened to be just as unstable.  Instead of teaching I fell fast asleep for three hours, sleeping past lunch (no big deal) and awaking in time to feel the sun ramp up its super-powers.  I shut my windows and now am hiding away in my sweltering cave, hiding from the even more oppressive heat outside, my obligations, and anything or anyone that might ask me to be present and accountable.

I could, actually, be moping.  It's been a long time since I have moped, so I'm not sure.  But the permanent pout I've been sporting all afternoon is a pretty good sign.

I talked to Nicole today.  She is in Varanasi hanging out with some boatmen and swimming in the Ganges which, since she told me she just saw a dead cow float by, seems like a rather, well, insane thing to do.  I felt jealous, though, that she is out in the crazy world, taking risks, while I am moping in my dark room.

It got me thinking about that last three weeks in April that I'll have after I leave Santiniketan and before I go back to Seattle.  Whatever shall I do?  As the Celsius rises, I am aware that my ability to move with any speed or even joyful sense of adventure will be severely handicapped.  But, time is running out.

The prudent thing is to do what the English always did at this time of year and disappear into the hills around Darjeeling.  I'll probably do that for a week.  Then I must see Varanasi myself and though I'd like to swim in the Ganges I'd rather do it from farther up stream where dead bodies aren't a regular feature:  Rishikesh, maybe?  I leave from Delhi on the 28th of April, so it is looking like Jaipur will have to be axed from my current itinerary.

People always talk about how big India is and, therefore, how hard it is to see everything.  India is actually not that big, just increasingly hot and always hard to get around in.  The diversity of the country also becomes a looming factor when contemplating the next move: will the next place be more or less conservative than where I am now, will it be primarily Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, will it be hot, cold, dry, humid and do I have the right clothes, can I get there by plane, or do I take an all night train, or must I chance a bus????

I should not be asking these questions today.  They feel like itchy wool sweaters worn on already sensitive, and very hot, skin.

I keep telling myself that the lethargy and the irritability that arise as the temperatures begin to soar are important aspects of being in India; they are part and parcel of the whole experience.  I cannot separate out these lousy days of adjusting to the extreme weather and pretend that they are aberrations.   I must not punish myself for losing time and experiences because I am not out and about every possible moment.  I've only got to find a way to give into the shift in dynamics, to respect the heat, and to discover what smaller worlds are waiting behind shuttered windows in the still realms of this country where extremes of every kind, weather, geography, religion, politics, social status, shape its essential mysterious beauty.

But can I start to do all that tomorrow?  Today, I only feel like moping.