Welcoming the Darkness

So, here we are again. Reaching the end of another cycle, and welcoming the darkest (at least in the Northern hemisphere) part of the year. 2017 was a bit of a doozy. I have yet to connect with anyone who called it easy. It’s been a year that’s stretched us to our limits in almost every sense. It’s been demanding, and sometimes relentless. Also, it doesn’t seem like it shows any signs of stopping.

Purification

“Purity” is one of these words. Somehow it brings to mind a puffy-sleeved-seven-layer cake of a wedding dress made of some un-namable man-made material. I hear banjos. I smell aqua net. I am transported to sweaty back seat congress and resounding no means no’s. There is a demand. There is a judgment. And it almost always has to do with sex.

The Pilgrimage Part Three

Tarapith

March 12th 2012

Tarapith has been an exercise in surrender, bladder control and chocolate biscuits.

I had visions of me writing daily reports, recording the minutia of the experience…but in truth after 11 straight hours meditating in the hot sun on a cremation ground I have barely the power left to think, let alone write….

The Pilgrimage Part Two

Thailand to India

February 23 2012

It’s on.

I’m up early and it’s painless. There’s a taxi waiting outside as I’m checking out, and he’s happy to take me to the airport at a reasonable rate. There’s no traffic. I giggle with the woman checking me in about how my departure date coincides perfectly with my visa’s expiration. She claims that the flight isn’t full and offers me a seat at the back with no one in the neighboring seats. Immigration is pleasant. Everyone is helpful. I begin to recognize foreshadowing.

The Pilgrimage Part One

November 28 2011

Day 4

The thing I remember most about the conversation was the angle of the couch. Me, sprawled out in some Brooklyn apartment somewhere in 2003, virtually drawn and quartered between different realities. My mind moves back to that place and tries to crawl back into itself and fails miserably. I can’t remember who I was then, what belief systems were in place, what kinds of things made me happy, what moved me. I can’t put in place the driving force behind my being, I can’t remember toward what I oriented myself. I can’t really locate me in space.