1. cambodians
there are some cambodian students who have just moved into amar bhavan, where we are all staying. i asked one of them, "is cambodia like this?" and by like this i meant, totally filthy and insane, and he said, "cambodia is a poor country but it's not like this." and went on to say that varanasi is very dirty even by cambodian standards. now, i have never been to cambodia, but i think if the cambodians think varanasi is dirty, that is pretty telling. xep and i were trying to imagine whether there is any place on earth dirtier than varanasi. we were saying, how could there be? the real key is the cows that roam free and shit everywhere. that is the thing that takes the dirtyness to its fullest extent, maybe. this isn't to say i'm not enjoying myself, but to be here is to marvel at the level of total hygenic chaos.
2. goldie hawn
people in varanasi seem very interested to tell us about how goldie hawn comes here to varanasi. i had three different people tell me that goldie hawn famous movie actress comes to varanasi. my boat guide told me this the other morning. he said she comes here to see an astrologer, and that he predicted she would be a famous movie star. he offered to take me to this astrologer, but i wasn't feeling like i could trust him, so i said no. but then the fellows here at the internet stand, who by this time i have totally made friends with since i'm always here updating this shit and emailing oliver and etc, they told me they could take me to him. the astrologer is called lal baba, and finally i agreed to let Om, my internet stand pal, take me to see lal baba. it was a trade off, because afterward Om took me to see his boss' silk factory, as i expected might happen. in varanasi there are about a billion touts who get paid to bring tourists to the silk factories where the owner then proceeds to try to sell them silk scarves and othre silk items. Om is really good at it because his english is great and he understands western speech and manners well enough to actually befriend the tourists at the internet stand.
anyway, i went to see lal baba. this was one of those experiences you totally want to happen to you in india. into a rickshaw, down a tiny cow filled alleyway, down another, aorund a bend, past the well pump, lal baba's blue porch. lal baba's receiving room, a concrete box with a bed/couch in it and plastic chairs. his bookshelves, metal, and the books each wrapped in red cloth and tied with a string, stacked up. lal baba himself, a coughing old man all in white who lays on the bed while he talks with you.
lal baba drew up my chart from his decaying atlases and ephemerides, whcih he keeps wrapped up in thread and yellow and red cloth. i watched him do the calculations by hand on a yellow page in a book with red binding, the pages all full of other people's charts and calculations. he read my hand, the shape of my hand. he told me some things.. some of them blew me away and some of them seemed to be wrong because of impossible cultural differences. i won't tell them to anyone until they come true, but i will say indian astrology is incredibly predictive so you get dates and times for various upcoming events.
and yes, i guess i saw goldie hawn's astrologer... he also had a photo on the wall of him getting a medal from some important political figure. in india it's impossible to know what's the real deal and what's an elaborate scam created to separate white people from their rupees, but i think this was the real deal. he was definitely doing the real math that you do to get a chart, and he had all the right books, the ones i would have to use to draw up a chart by hand.
3. assi ghat
later that night we went to a ceremony on the ghat for mother ganges. they played a chant that i know, on the loudspeakers: mahdeva shambo, kashi vishwanatha gange, which was sooo great because it has been in my head all week already! it mentions the vishwanath temple here in kashi (another name for banares/varanasi), and so i'd been singing it because we're here. THEN we made friends with a little kid on the ghat who was a little businessman but also just a friendly kid. he had on a rag of a plaid shirt and when i asked him why people light candles and put them into the ganges he pontificated with much authority: IT BRINGS YOU GOOD LUCK AND YOU DO THIS AND YOU FEEL GOOD IN YOUR HEART AND YOU ARE HAPPY AND YOU HAVE GOOD LUCK IN YOUR HEART AND YOU ARE RICH. ok then. we lit some candles and placed them in the ganges. then the kid led me to the holy man who put sandal and mendhi blessings on my head. i gave him some rupees for offering and he gave me oil and presad. i was supposd to eat presad but it sketched me out (i'm being really careful what i eat so not to get sick) so i faked eating it and put in my pocket. i tried to feed it to the variopus baby goats on the ghat later, but goats don't want presad either.
i realize i'm some kind of jerk american for not eating holy presad because i'm afraid of indian germs, but after seeing the clean tourists in bermuda shorts waddle from their A/C bus into the A/C RADISSON VARANASI yesterday i don't feel like much of a jerk american. i feel like a badass. if you saw my accomodation you would think i was a badass too, i'll tell you that, it's moldy squat toilet paradise.
WHEW that was a lot of typing. i am enabled by not being on the keyboard that has the letters re-painted on with white out.
gage & weeb & i head to rishikesh in just a few days. i think we're definitely ready to move on. i'm even looking forward to the 22 hour train ride. it will be peaceful.
it's been so hot & i've become a bit worn down by varanasi, that very little has occured in the past couple of days. i'm not unhappy, just haven't had the inclination to go out in the rickshaws and find action and sightseeing. have mostly been laying around amar bhavan reading. we also found a wonderful cafe near our place that has espresso and delicious muffins and frozen yogurt so i've been chillin' there reading too, and the result is that finsihed Boonville. it was good!
there's an english language bookstore on assi ghat near our place and i now have two more books to read: love in the time of cholera and paul auster's new york trilogies (don't laugh, oliver - i know we have a copy at home but i want to read it now!). in addition i've made some wonderful jewelry purchases today, an 80 year old tribal necklace pendant being my favorite,but also some real silver ankle bracelets and some other wonderful silver tribal bracelets.
we have an amazing AIR CONDITIONED beautifully decorated room at a hotel near amar bhavan tonight... partially because we overstayed our stated time at amar bhavan but mostly because we all craved some toilet paper, real beds (i've been sleeping on the floor in the common room), and professional hotel standards of hygiene.
i'm at the internet stand uploading pictures to flickr - check them out
tomorrow at around 10am we have a 22 hour train ride to rishikesh. hooray! time for veg cutlet and chai dip chai dip
hello from dharamsala. it is very high up here - about 2000 meters or 6400 feet. my guidebook says that i should only worry about altitude sickness at 4000 meters, and ok, maybe i don't have altitude SICKNESS but i surely have monsoon+altitude intense sleepiness and tiredness. or maybe i am still really tired from the harrowing but exciting 12 hour bus ride from dehra dun.
to back up. much hath occured since we left varanasi for rishikesh on monday morning. we took a 20 hour train ride to a town just south of rishikesh called haridwar. we arrived at dawn after a train ride that would have been much more fun had the train not been infested with friendly cockroaches. the dawn over haridwar was beautiful, though, and the ride to rishikesh was also very beautiful and fun because we got to see all the kanwarias partying on the streets to thumping indian techno and crowding around the ganges in a sea of orange.
re: kanwarias
august in india is the time of the festival of kanwarias, mostly young male pilgrims who are walking to the ganges to collect ganges water and bring it home to their temples. it's a celebration of thanksgiving for the god shiva. the kanwarias crowd the roads from delhi to rishikesh in huge packs, each one dressed in orange and carrying a bamboo pole that has two pots of ganges water, one hanging off each end. we saw a number of kanwarias in varanasi, but they were calmer than the ones we saw around rishikesh. the kanwarias in rishikesh have much more elaborately decorated poles, some of them huge constructions of tinsel, plastic flowers, etc. and it wasn't until rishikesh that we saw them partying hard, dancing behind trucks with soundsystems in them, or at mini-raves all along the side of the road. when i walked through a huge crowd of them on the banks of the ganges in rishikesh, near swarg ashram, i realized they are not peaceful holy pilgrims like i'd expected. this festival seems to be some kind of shiva spring break, and the hordes of young men are pretty rowdy. they were following me around, eve teasing me (that's the indian term for catcalling/sexual harassment), yelling HELLO and trying to take my picture. if i stopped for a moment anywhere, a pack of sometimes as many as 50 of the "orange dudes," as we've been calling them, would surround me. it wasn't that scary, but it was incredibly tiring. i don't want to be unfriendly but there is no way to do anything but yell CHELO (go away) over and over to packs of rowdy young men who are following you for blocks and blocks chanting "one picture, one picture".
before that walk, arrival in rishikesh had already been rough for me, probably just because i hadn't really eaten or had any water on the train, and got rougher when i saw that the hotel we'd booked was not the peaceful place i'd hoped it would be due to it's location next to a noisy road filled with kanwaria traffic. then i realized that for the first time since delhi my cellphone worked, but i'd left my phone charger at the hotel in varanasi. this was super upsetting for me because being out of contact with oliver has been harder than i expected it would be, and being unable to make phone calls in general has been really really frustrating since my arrival here. if i ever come to india again, which i genuinely hope i will, i will make all bookings and reservations before hand. finding hotels at the last minute and trying to figure out how to call them up with no cellphone has taken up a lot of time and been kind of nervewracking.
in the midst of my arrival frustration and unhappiness i found a phone stand on the street and called oliver weeping bitterly. it was just like those moments at burning man where you get too dehydtrated and everything seems so filthy and forbidding and you just break down, unable to deal with the struggle of existing any longer. i was hot and tired and there was nowhere to go and i hated the hotel and i hated the idea of figuring out how to travel out of the crowds of rishikesh. i wept on the phone for a while and oliver comforted me. then when i went to pay the phone stand operator he was genuinely concerned for me (because my weeping phone call had happened two feet away from him - there is no privacy in india), which actually made me feel a lot better. i was at a point of frustration where india seemed like a very forbidding place full of people who were just out to scam me, so having an indian person be very kind to me was really good. he also charged me the normal price for the phone instead of trying to get twice as many rupees out of me. a small relief.
eventually after wandering by myself for a while, finding some peaceful woodlands on a road replete with cows and butterflies, investigating other sub-par hotel options in rishikesh, and consulting via the interwebs with my friends on icb, i decided the only thing to do was high tail it from rishikesh asap, for a little alone time and some kind of better hotel situation. i thought perhaps i'd go to dharamsala right away, but instead i took a taxi up into the himalayas to spend two nights at the incredibly amazingly luxurious life saving ananda spa. after 10 days sleeping on the floor of the common room at buggy amar bhavan, ananda spa was such a relief. i can't even really begin to describe its amazingness. i communed with peacocks, ate actual vegetables, slept peacefully, had a real bath, and watched beautiful sunsets over the himalayas. and went for a swim. and and and. there's just no way to explain the perfection. i was basically treated like a princess for the entire time i was there. and when it was time to leave the porter took me to the bus station, found my bus, bought my ticket,and waited with me until gage and weeb arrived. so good! i felt moderately imperialistic, but i also felt like i was getting a chance to experience all possible levels of india travel.
unfortunately i think my body figured out that ananda spa was a safe place for my delhi belly to hit, and so i've been having sad india guts since wednesday morning. i blame train food, but who knows. it's not so bad as far as these things go. i think it is contributing to my tiredness tho.
so that brings us almost to now. gage & weeb and i boarded the 12 hour "deluxe" bus to dharamsala around 5pm. bus ride: harrowing but strangely fun. no AC. lots to see out my window that did not close, including a beautiful sunset over the yamuna and tons of orange dudes partying to crazy lit up shiva discos. i'd left my scarf in my luggage that was unreachable under the bus, so for 12 long hours my hair whipped around getting stuck to my sweaty face, and everytime i touched my lap i would discover a new layer of road grit on me.
the bus, however, was the first sign that we were heading to the land of tibetans. a tibetan girl, maybe 13 or 14, sat next to me. her name was rigzin and she started talking to me by pointing her finger at tibet on my guidebook map. she told me she had been born in india and had never even been to tibet. and she told me excitedly about this banner which was hung on the great wall of china in the last couple of days. later i heard people talking about the banner in the hotel restaurant. and just now i met a young man in the local coffee shop (actual coffee shop - the cappucino i had there is clearly powering this post) who had been in delhi yesterday for this protest to shame china in the face of the olympics. it is strange to be here and see firsthand that the FREE TIBET of late 90s beastie boys fame is real and still happening. the american media has largely dropped it, and i certainly hadn't considered it at any great length in a few years. i have not even begun to process a lot of what i have seen in india, as far as how it will change my perception of myself in the larger world, and being here to see the tibetan people in exile is just another piece of that puzzle that i think will take me some months of reflection to unravel.
in general i have been quite exhausted since arriving in dharamsala, like i said before, the altitude and the bus ride combined have drained me. plus it is raining quite heavily out there, the mists are so thick that i can't see the surrounding mountains at all. it may be like this the whole time we're here, which is fine, except that my only pair of waterproof shoes have gone missing from my hotel room or maybe from the hotel common area. i did purchase an umbrella though. tradeoffs.
i believe this will be my last stop in india before my return trip to delhi on the 18th or 19th to prepare for my flight home which leaves late at night on the 20th. there was some talk of going to Agra to see the Taj but I honestly don't know if i have it in me to travel to Agra, even if it's a day trip from Delhi. that could be my current altitude exhaustion talking, though, we'll see.
i'll try to post more pics before i leave dharamsala
ok that was a lot of typing
love.
dharamsala is really good. it has been misty and cold like san francisco, and i haven't spent TOO much time exploring yet, but the coffee shops and jewelry nests i have found so far are friendly and great. i have spent all my rupees on many excellent finds all around the main road here. it feels good here, and even the dogs are fatter and nicer than anywhere else in india so far.
also, today i petted a baby yak. at least i think it was a yak. it was a wirey haired thing that was different than cows. it was wandering in the street behind some cows. i walked up to it and put my hand out and it stuck its wet nose into my hand and let me stroke its lil' yak snout. this alone is worth my trip to india. i was so happy i forgot to take its photo. i hope i see it again.
i am almost done with love in the time of cholera. it has been pretty amazing. though i don't quite feel like gabriel garcia marquez will become one of my favorite authors, he does have some really soaring moments of prose that are unforgettable.
let's fucking do this then. just make it quick.
still in dharamsala. i am getting really good at timing my outings so that i am outside when it's not raining and inside when it is. it has been misty and rainy here a lot, but the most amazing thing is how much the weather changes throughout any given day. it will go from sunny to thunderstorms to mist to rain to sun to crazy baying dogs all night, which isn't really a weather condition but seems like one.
speaking of dogs, yesterday i saw a guy feeding all the street dogs bowls of oats! he looked pretty official and when i asked him he said he feeds them three times a week. i tried to get the name of the organization he worked for so i could give them money but i couldn't understand what he was saying. alas. perhaps some googling will turn something up. it made me really happy to see all the pooches getting fed tho.
day before yesterday i went for a walk to the tibetan secretariat and medical-astro institute, which turned out to be MUCH farther than i thought. it was probably about 2 or 3 miles down a really steep road to get there. the walk was beautiful but i was dismayed when i reached the secretariat and remembered that all the taxis in dharamsala are on strike right now so i would have to walk back.. uphill. i survived the walk back with a stop at a cafe for fresh lemon soda, which is one of the best things beverage-wise india has to offer.
at the secretariat, i saw the tibetan parliament in exile and some other official tibetan government buildings, but i had set out there to try to get my tibetan astrological reading done at the main offices of the astro institute. when i arrived at the astro institute, it was pretty strange, the offices were dark with huge metal desks from the 60s and reminded me very much of the old military base offices my dad would take me in as a kid. when i walked in the busy tibetans looked up and there was a bit of scurrying and then someone gestured for me to sit down at one of the desks. i asked if i could get my horoscope done there and the woman looked at me with the sort of surprised concern face that seems universal amongst tibetans when you ask them for help or service of some sort. she explained apologetically that there is ONE YEAR WAIT to get a chart done at their offices, and invited me to put my name and email address on the waiting list and they would email me when they are ready for me. ok. i don't know what i will do when/if they actually email me.
on my way out i bought the only book they had in english about tibetan astrology. the shopkeeper that i purchased it from was very dedicated to chanting a mantra and we had a very odd interaction where should would chant chant chant chant chant then answer my question in loud english then chant chant chant chant. so it was like mantra mantra mantra mantra YES, OVER THERE mantra mantra mantra 50 RUPEES PLEASE mantra mantra mantra. i have never had that happen before and felt guilty for disturbing her. the book i got was totally illuminating, though, and i read most of it already with great interest. tibetan astrology seems to involve ALL of the following insane and exciting things:
learning all this made me very excited, but then, more distressed at not being able to have my tibetan astrological info charted out. determined, i stopped by another place on the way back from the secretariat that advertised tibetan astrology. after navigating some labyrinths of balconies and stairs and barking dogs and helpful monks, i finally found someone that worked there. she peered at me with the same concern/sympathy when she explained that they too were booked up on readings for over a year. i asked her why and she said that calculating the horoscope takes around one week. that totally makes sense when you see all of what is involved.
i wish i could find someone to do my tibetan horoscope in the states but that seems rather unlikely. perhaps i will have to come back to dharamsala in a year.
what else.
yesterday we took a rather long and somewhat ridiculous ride in a tiny auto rickshaw (since the taxis are still on strike - an auto rickshaw is like a glorifed 3 wheel scooter with a bench in the back. looks like a tuktuk if you've seen those in thailand) uphill and downhill and uphill again, to go visit the norbulingka institute. the norbulingka institute was started about 15 years ago and they are a nonprofit dedicated to preserving tibetan art and culture. they run the guest house we're staying at in dharamsala but their main complex is about 20k south of mcleod ganj. there they have about 300 tibetan artisans living communally, another guesthouse, a temple, and workshops. it was very very beautiful there, amazing gardens and buildings. i took photos, will upload at some point.
very little else goes on. i have finished the first story in the new york trilogy and i'm still confused about it. i bought a ton of prayer flags today. my stomach has been messed up off and on. i got some bad news from home that has been fucking with me a fair amount but i'm trying to remain present in the reality of being in INDIA of all places.
we leave here early in the AM day after tomorrow, which is pretty much a bummer, but i'm looking forward to the travel. we are flying to delhi from the nearby town of pathankot, having grown tired of trains and grueling bus rides. plus, with scary landslides and rainfall in this state, avoiding the roads seemed like a good thing. after we land in delhi we'll share a taxi to Agra, home of the taj mahal. we hope to get up very early to see it, spend half or most of the day there, and then taxi back to delhi, where i fly home the following night. i am very happy because we've made all the reservations for these plans and i no longer have to figure out how to negotiate indian telephony to call hotels and book train tickets etc.
ok bye!
saw the taj mahal today. looking upon it was like eating the best meal that you have ever eaten. it was also like a drug exprience, and also for a moment i was so overwhelmed by it i felt like i might cry. a life dream might be to go there one day and have the whole place to myself. i am told that foreign dignitaries get to do this! maybe i should become a foreign dignitary.
the taj mahal is a monument to symmetry. i am convinced that its intense symmetry is what causes the visceral reaction in people who look at it. not just the intricacy, but the intricacy of the symmetry. but i am a worshipper of symmetry, and it seems that india is a land that loves symmetry. the ladies always wear bangles and ankle bracelets on both wrists and both ankles, the same. i was worried that the nose pierced women of india might think i was weird for having both nostrils pierced, but so many of them do, too. so good!
afterwards we went to the red fort, which was also beautiful. while we were there, an indian girl in a bright orange lehenga set (the matching top/pants/scarf set) came up to me and asked to take my picture. i said yes, because she was female, and because i have certainly photographed many indians. i posed for her. she took my photo with her cellphone. then she came back, holding a baby in her arms. it was a bald girl baby in a little white ruffle butt outfit, maybe not quite a year old. she stood in front of me with the baby for a moment, showing me the baby and gesturing to the baby and then me. i said namaste to the baby, who was very peaceful and stoic. i played with the baby's feet, held her little hand. the girl in orange kept gesturing back and forth until i realized she was asking me to hold the baby. i took the baby up in my arms and she and her family all held up their cellphones to take photos of me holding the baby and the baby being stoic and peaceful. it was one of the most inexplicable things that has happened to me here and one of the most wonderful. thoughts i had afterward: an american mother would never hand her baby to a foreigner! american women never hand me their babies anyway, much as i would enjoy that. and, i wonder if she thought i was some kind of movie star?
my camera ran out space today, so i was taking not very many pictures. i am a judicious photo taker anyway. i don't see the point of taking photos of monuments and landscapes, because nothing ever does these things justice anyway, so i try to take photos that are just interesting photos, even if there's no way to ever explain what was happening around them and especially when it doesn't matter where they were taken just that they are. but i also have learned on this trip especially that i take photos with my mind, with my memory, and that this journal is how i document that. this journal is my picture of india. being here has made me realize that in a more direct way than i ever realized before.
also, i am going home tomorrow.
i am home. everything in my life changed while i was away and now i am just this weird walking blank slate. i had been staying with oliver at his tiny apt, but that can't happen anymore now. i spent my first day home packing my stuff there. so i am couch surfing san francisco, on the catsitting circuit of my friends' summer vacations. living out of the same pack i used in india.
i'm sad but i also feel just very very blank and it's confusing because i'm doing things, walking, writing, packing, eating, and i just feel so disconnected from them. the permutations of anxiety and insecurity that were roiling through me for the past few years have been scrubbed away and it's like my mind and body don't know what to do in their absence. i feel steady and powerful and like i understand, but the tears still come randomly. without the anxiety fueling me, i don't need to keep trying to grab onto false safety, or to anything really, but i'm mystified about what to do instead. i just don't really want anything. i guess this is what it feels like when you don't need to hang on anymore.
my only directives for the next few weeks are to eat and sleep consistently. it's the only thing that is going to keep me ok.
i need a place to live. i hate apartment hunting in SF.
just walked through dolores park. saw four or five people people dancing in interesting hats to a tinny boombox. i didn't understand. it seemed like a movie or LA. then i saw there was a table, and the table had a pan of cupcakes on it, and a sign hanging from it that said DANCE FOR CUPCAKES.
love san francisco.
there are these abiding shining moments that make me know that something has been returned to me, even though it mostly feels like everything has been taken away. i cannot list them all, but just now it was that i came home to where i am staying to discover that oceana, a very ethereal beautiful cat, is sleeping on yet another portion of my pile of belongings. she is pretty amazing. it's like having a pet ghost.
listening to hot chip, and closing the tab in my web browser that'd been open to the lyrics of idiot wind for a week.
i've written 6,800 words of reflection since i got back from india. it helps so much. i write when i wake up, and when i feel like i'm going to freak out. it clears everything out, and it helps me think and remind myself of where i want to be with this whole thing. i don't know how long it's going to take to get there but doing all this writing feels like a brain and heart massage to get me there unscathed.
on sept 3, saturn will finally get to 0 virgo, the degree of my natal saturn. instead of worrying about this, i actually think it's going to be a relief. i feel like saturn in leo is pissing over the border of leo/virgo onto my natal saturn. lording over it from two degrees away in the way only a planet in leo can. come home to virgo, saturn, where we are calm, we are practical, we get work done, the world is something we can control via its details.
also, some other media that got me through last week. also, constant jarett on aim has saved my broken up ass.
the days are mostly okay. sf is beautiful and so sunny. work is comforting. people are great and nice. i am almost 30.
