Shivaratrey

3.10.13

I sat on the wall behind the pit where wood burnt and men threw red rice into the fire.  The ladies were in the cellar of the temple doing their puja and when they came out they were offered tea and we all sat comfortably in the cloudy and somewhat chilly courtyard along the stone wall.  And when a core of men and women followed the priest’s chant around the pit they called out a prayer and I dropped my camera.  It was a good camera, not a great one.  I won’t buy one like that again but if I can get it repaired I doubt it.  We’ll see which way the winds blow me in the next few days.  Waiting.  It’s not about the money you say, what do you want from Shiva? 

I want peace and happiness.  That’s all.  Thunder crackles wonderfully in the valley.  I will miss nature so much here.  Especially this time of year.  It’s not about the money ok, I’ll bite but if you live in a beautiful place and you are poor, do you enjoy it as much?  Not a bloody chance, pal.   

Sigh. 

And I felt honored to be asked to roll a fatty while I sat under a Datura tree in the temple garden by one of leaders of the community and whose name shares the festival.  The children were going to learn some lessons today about the sacred plant.   

Midnight

I returned to room 8 at exactly midnight.  Shiva’s Birthday is officially up in smoke.  Throughout the valley you can still hear the chonch shells and drums and for a moment I looked at the huge domed sky and for a place to pitch a tent.  Sleeping outside I’ll have to do that before I leave and sleep outside the LAX Westin at the end of the month. 

I have to have another plan if I don’t return and I don’t know one except buy a tent and a suit with tie and nice shoes and trek from Pasadena to...where in two months?  There’s a lot of paperwork including probably maybe God I hope not going to D.C.  What’s wrong with D.C?  Trekking in the capital.  It’s all cement.

There were many privileges given tonight and I won’t I can’t I shouldn’t highlight but a festival that requires an entire day of preparation and it continues into the night in the completed lower floor of the big temple on the view top, people laughing hard with each other, that’s good medicine.  Actually, it might just be the most therapeutic exercise in modern times and it’s too bad they don’t do it more often.  Dancing and drums and percussions and into the frenzy realm where the cosmos mix with everyone.

 Four generations practicing the oldest bloody form of praise on this creaky earth. 

If I went into the interview with a list of loaded questions that would reveal cracks in their way of managing their system would they hire me for more money and as something other than a teacher?  I don’t know, is there such a title. 

3.11.13

Afternoon sun and a cool wind replace two days of rain and showers and there appears to be a most casual attitude for the owners and family.  I don’t know what would bring that out of Suman and Suson who hang out in the garden on another day off to suck the marrow of life.

Carl the Cock hasn’t eaten anything for two days.  When he is released he flaps his wings, shakes himself vigorously and then finds a way up to Kushi’s home where Harley the Hen and her slew of chicks ramble about.  He’s not hungry for food, he’s hungry for sex, and then the clever bird found a rough patch difficult to reach right out and over the lower garden.  At dusk he will return to the dining room across from the toilet. 

It is hard to remain awake in the dining room even with women who never stop working but they’re not getting on anyone’s case right now. All work is done except for the rooms and is Didi waiting until someone wants to check in to clean it?  I should get up and do the sheets.  It’s ninety minutes after the hour of one in the afternoon. 

Waiting for so long and nothing happens.  Anticipating here is easy, out there, below, well I don’t know.  My intuition doesn’t register I am kept in the dark until the last second.  Here, it’s second nature.  There, a black hole of I don’t knows. 

3.12.13

Antalya in August is far away.  I don’t know what I will do before then.  I can stay here until the end of May and then what?  And staying here instead of floating somewhere in America leaves me without a net.  Shit.  Even a sunrise and a tropical serenade of birds isn’t helping.

I stood in the field and birds swarmed and zipped and hovered as the four-wing aphids rose from the ground like ashes.  Lunch time in the late afternoon.  Then the hawks came in droves, several coming so close to me their white spotted bellies whooshed in the golden light.  No camera of mine could have captured such a scene.

The young former Venezuelans now from Argentina but who work in Barcelona enjoy the sugar cane Maya cuts with the sickle in front along the steps.  They’re newly married Maya is very happy for them and sure enough she measures up every woman that would be good for me.  Suman turns his head and where I sit behind smiles like a goof.  Now the newlywed lady who smokes Lucky Strikes picks herself up and takes a few steps away.  Children at the age of fourteen still don’t connect what is being said and what actions are taking place and that produces the embarrassing obvious. 

 

Three days now of these 1g Augmentin.  A nasty fever, swollen throat, an empty nose that I could draw air and feel it go down far, nothing’s going to take care of this, not even grapefruit seed extract.  My concern is should I take them for seven straight days if it might be known to later eliminating its effectiveness for some real deadly virus in some tropical paradise with wild ducks. 

When Suman came to the room he took my broken camera and wouldn’t you know it he began to play around and managed to get the lens to close. Eureka!  Nice job, dude.  And yet I didn’t take it up for the sunset for a more awesomely look through the window outside the dining room toilet,  sky filled hawks gliding, swooping, catching aphids with their talons and feeding themselves.  Quite extraordinary Romulous agrees, your one hour of life on earth is to be food for the birds of the air.