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.

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.

Dreams and Omens, The Mystery Begins

You know how, when you learn a new word, that word suddenly starts popping up everywhere?

Well, ever since I decided I needed to go to India, Indian people started popping up everywhere.

The most poignant example of this concerns my dog Toby.

Toby and I dancing in our younger days.

Toby was a great, lovable soul.  He forgave me lots.  He was unbelievably forgiving about my leaving him for 3 months to travel to Europe and, before that, for going to Florida to do a show.  Oh, sure, he'd be a little distant or pull too hard on the leash for a while after I returned to let me know his feelings had been hurt but, all in all, he let a lot slide.  As he got older and began his battle with cancer it became clear to both of us that neither he nor I could stand another long separation while he was still among the living.  This is one of the reasons I didn't achieve my goal of going to India when I was 40.

Last spring, Toby really started to hurt.  I agonized and agonized about when to make THE call to his vet.  One night Toby and I were hanging out in the living room and he was whimpering so much that I just knew it was time.  It being after business hours I called what I thought was an emergency vet I'd been to once before, years ago, but when I arrived to a new address, thinking they'd moved, I found a completely different operation.  The place I ended up was in a little strip mall.  The unpainted walls looked as if they'd just been puttied with drywall caulk five minutes before I walked in. A gorgeous young Indian man greeted me, checked me in, came to get Toby and me from the car when it was time to meet the doctor who was, it turned out, the younger man's father.  The nurse was the doctor's wife.  It was a family business.

The doc took a look at Toby, gave me a surgical option that might have given my pup a few more months, and I decided Toby would not like or understand surgery and a mediocre and temporary recovery.

Putting Toby to sleep was very difficult.  His veins were tired and didn't want to take the anesthesia.  Plus...plus...he was my baby and he was scared and he was leaving me and its always a leap of faith that somehow, somehow your beloved animal will know that its because you love them so much that you are willing to ease their way into the afterlife.

While the doc and his wife struggled to get the chemicals into Toby's system I tried to calm him through tears that grew to intermittent sobbing.  At one point the doc had to go to get some different supplies and left Toby, me and the nurse sitting on the floor.  The lovely Indian woman stroked Toby's head whispering kind words one minute, then she stroked my head and whispered loving words to me...back and forth.  When the doctor returned we all sat together, in a room no bigger than most closets, while the drugs finally did their work.

As soon as it was all over the lovely Indian couple left me so I could say goodbye to Toby but not before hugs were exchanged and parental pleas were made to me not to drive until I had sat for a good long while to recover a bit.

As instructed, I sat in my car for 20 minutes or so flooded with both grief and awe.  I could not have imagined a better set of humans to go through that experience with and I was suddenly aware that now, now I could go to India without leaving Toby heartbroken.

And my heartbreak?

It will mend; I think I know where.

When I drove away I felt certain that the animal clinic would vanish like Brigadoon, so angelic and unexpected were the family I'd met.

Since then I meet someone from India or of Indian origin three or four times a week, which never used to happen before I bought my ticket.  There's always about each encounter the sense of other-worldly intervention, like these souls are little sparks of light meant to convey approval by the universe for my impending departure.

No.  I don't really think the universe is specially creating a web of Indian folk around me just so I will feel better about my crazy decision to up and leave my regular life for 3 and a half months.

I think the universe is creating webs around each of us, sending each of us clues all the time about whether we are on the right track or not....

Last night was the first time I dreamt of India.  I was walking down a road that ran along a bank that bordered a large body of water.  There were three weddings taking place along this lane.  The first had two brides in bright white dresses, blond, both of them, like super-models.  Their entire wedding party was made up of equally stunning women in bright red, monk-type robes, only worn off the shoulder or strapless.

The second couple being married were a very handsome man and woman in their 40s, witnessed by a group of 20 or so men and women.  Everyone was dressed in warm tones and natural fibers and everything about the party felt of the Earth, clean and calm and peaceful.

The third celebration was the third day of a traditional Indian wedding taking place on a Wednesday. (3, 3, 3)  The bride and groom were nowhere to be seen, but members of the congregation were standing both on the road around me and down on the bank, all anxiously awaiting the guests of honor.  One Indian woman next to me spit down below to clear her throat in a manner I associate more with men here in the states.  A British woman down below yelled up, "Do you mind." The Indian woman spit again.

I was reminded of this story my friend Sarah told me years ago about traveling in India by train.  She was sleeping in a seat by the window and she awoke just in time to see a stream of urine passing in front of her eyes.  A young boy child was standing on the seat next to her, peeing out the window.

Down on the beach of the third dream wedding, another woman started singing a sort of call-and-response song, very deep and throaty.  She was pausing every few seconds to take a drag on a very long home rolled cigar.  She would sing sing sing, inhale, sing sing sing, inhale.  The crowd would respond during her inhales.  The whole group was waiting and singing.

Then my phone went off...a text from my cousin...in the real world, and I started to leave the beach, the weddings, India, behind.  I was sad to be drifting towards daylight and I tried lingering in the dusk of the mysterious beach, in the aura of the musky smoke of the sensual singer's song and cigar for as long as my mind would let me.  As my wakeful brain took control, I wondered what my dream might portend.

Omens and dreams are strange things.  All are subject to interpretation.  I've decided that, for now, I will simply report on these misty and ambiguous happenings.

We shall soon discover if these occurrences be omens, or just strange quirks of fate and my imagination.