As The World Turns

As the sky was filling with darkness during the solar eclipse a couple of days ago, I was marching from the net cafe to a friend's house, storming a bit inside because the computers were painfully, dreadfully, achingly slow and every bit of emailing I needed to do felt important. I had given up after a half hour of periodically sighing and checking my watch, feeling close to tears for some reason (forgetting completely about it being a New Moon day with a solar eclipse). On my way I passed a young boy in his school uniform, who started hollering at me the moment he saw me. Nasty things come out of the mouths of the street boys here. Where are their mothers? What kind a culture is this? I snapped around at him and put my fist in his face and gave him a nice thick piece of my mind that sent him trotting away from me like a calf from a cattle prod.

Yesterday I had a much easier time with the computers, but low and behold, the boy next to me who had been quite polite to me earlier told me to look at his computer screen. Like an idiot I peeked, let the pornography hit me in the face for a second, and then I poured my entire bottle of water on his lap and left.

I think I might actually get some sort of a cattle prod to carry around.

I think the dramatic aligning of the moon, earth and sun have had dramatic effects on myself and those around me. For myself, I feel a sense of rising power. A turning outward, a revival of something that got buried within me in the past few years. The acupuncture treatments, while unsuccessful at solving any menstrual problems of mine, brought all kinds of things in my heart bubbling to the surface. The knots in my solar plexus were painful to touch for days but now feel quite open and my nervous stomache aches are all but gone. I think there is always something to heal within us all. There is always work to be done while we are alive and cognitive. There is always a deeper level and then a deeper level, and then a deeper level... Sometimes, though, I feel the levels come to a pleateau in meditation, and I can settle there, floating on whatever essence began me and will eventually finish me. It is there that I can forget about the dark bubbling in my solar plexus, the street boys, the missing of people back home, the bustling Indian metropolis carrying on around me. It is there that I feel more whole and complete and real than I ever have. I am also feeling immensely complete in externally important areas of my life. And by this I mean I am appreciating my family and friends immensely, now that I have taken a trip to the other side of the world to think about it a little. My heart fills with emotion and light and gratitude ever time I see a photo, read an email, linger in a memory.

In lighter news, I have nearly perfected Scorpion Pose, my new favorite posture and long-lusted after feat of accomplishment. I have a brilliant new friend named Ness who is the doppleganger of Sarah Jones, a cousin of mine whom I adore and look up to; she is graceful, pure-hearted, artistic and fantastically intelligent. The other day there was yet another festival celebrating...actually not even the locals seem to know what that day was about. But there was an awful lot of sugar cane lying around in piles all over the city and all of the cows were painted yellow with tumeric and their necks and heads decorated with florescent plastic rope, flowers, and bells.

It is hotter, now. I have a full-body sunburn from sitting at the pool too long in my bikini yesterday, amongst a whole mess of yoginis in bikinis (rippling muscles, sascrit and hindi tattoos galore, all of them looking ten years younger then they actually are, as is often the case with ashtangis, it seems). Luckily, aloe vera is easy to come by. The bikini I wore was sent to me as a surprise by my beloved Poni, who, in a mere ten days, will be here in India with me, sharing my space and adventures. While I am so happy to have had these months to focus purely on myself and my practice, I am overwhelmed with excitement to have someone deeply special to me to share this crazy country with.