indian eyes through my eyes surprise

indian eyes look at me wide with wonder.  they are childlike in the frankness of their curiosity.  frankly curious, no hiding their curiosity, no qualms about invading your personal sphere with their piercing gaze, it opens up an unabashed gazing freedom.  gaze where you want.  allow your gaze to linger.   everything is said by the eyes.  i have come to know what it probably feels like to be a attractive girl.  walking down the street, all eyes follow you - they cannot help following you.
therefore when the eye communication becomes too piercing i look straight ahead, conscious but unheeding.  i have actually realised how strange a person i must be, often provoking eyes of surprise.  i cannot hope to blend in, i will always be a wandering maverick.

i rolled into bangalore this morning, on the night train from mangalore.  i arrived too late at the ticket office to reserve a bunk on the sleeper class so could only buy a general class ticket, which some people told me is overcrowded and uncomfortable and best avoided.  i didn't mind it so much.  it cost 110 rupees (something like one pound thirty pence) for twelve hours of train.  first of all i got on the sleeper carriage anyway.  when the uniformed ticket controller found me sitting by the doorway with my general class ticket he talked with some passion to his companion, making gestures in my direction and using the words euro and dollar.  i felt that he probably disapproved of me sitting on the train floor with my barefeet and my old rucksack and not making the effort to wear a clean new shirt, when i probably come from a country where i am afforded the opportunity to earn good money and present myself better and conduct myself more respectfully.  the train stopped somewhere in the dark and me and other general class ticket holders were barked out of the doorway into the night onto the sharp railway track rocks "come   go to last carriage!"

i was ready for the general class; i liked the feeling of everybody hunkering down together.  i found a space by the door and rolled out my sleeping mat and pulled out my hindi notes or got to dozing and felt myself lulled by the chug chug chug of the train drifting through the night, at the same time overhearing the people going to the toilet next to me and spitting into the sink and overlooking my slumber with their protective gazes.  i was sitting on a bench looking over my hindi notes at mangalore station when a man leaned heavily over my shoulder and joined me in scrutinizing my rendering of the devanagri script: aaj aapki taviyat kaisi hai? (what is your health like today?) he wanted to know where i came from and why i was learning hindi.  why was i learning hindi when i already speak english and english is a language spoken all over india? the phrase "a love of languages" swam into my head but i had the feeling that would not satisfy him.  i had the feeling that i could not give him a satisfactory account of why i had chosen to come to india.  "you want to meet indian girls?"  he suggested, "you like indian girls?"   well, yes, indian girls seem nice, but i haven't really got to know any, but ...indian girls are beside the point, i wanted to say to him.  he wanted to know my cell phone number he wanted to know my facebook name, "why?" i asked him.   "i want to chat with you" but i had become somewhat irritated by his forceful way of barking questions and i waved him away and boarded my train.

i rolled into bangalore this morning, reputedly the third biggest city in india.  what is the difference between india and India?  India looks more important, e.g. The High Commission of India.
india is just india.
still, india though...

india is india is some place.  groves of palm trees slide past shimmering in the morning sun.  people standing arms crossed are framed momentarily looking up at me looking out from the open door of the train.  i see a woman poking with a stick among the rubbish and wonder what the purpose of her poking can be.  occasionally childs wave to me enthusiastically.  (why children? ...it is not worth asking the wherefore of the irregular pluralren, or any other grammatical irregularityren, of the english language) the side of the railroad is strewn evenly with plastic bags and other plastic paraphernalia as if somebody had displayed them there for some decorative purpose. as we near the city the dry weeds have occasionally been set on fire and the air is impregnated with the blackened acrid stench of burning plastic.   an uncomfortable feeling entered me when i was told to sling all the old plastic piping in the big hole in the woods "and then we'll set it on fire" said tattva, the headman of bhaketivedanta ecovillage where i have been living for the past week.  the next day the filthy odor billowed through the air and i mused on the misnomer of the term ecovillage.  i said to tattva "surely burning the plastic is the worst thing to do? if there are no recycling facilities, and it cannot be reused, then why not just let it lie in the hole?   better than polluting the atmosphere with those toxic gases".  tattva talked about how twenty years ago when the community had been set up they were full of goals of ecological responsibility but over the years they have realised that people want their comforts and nobody wants to participate in an alternative alternative way of doing things which avoids the accumulation of plastic waste. "if we didn't burn it, you know, we would have to dig many holes all over the forest, and its not cheap to hire a digger to come up here and dig holes for us"

bhaktivedanta is set amid stunning special trees and rolling hilly land.  it is quite isolated, about three kilometres of bumpy track through deep old forest and then another thirteen kilometres of potholed twisty downhill road to kollur, the nearest village.  tattva said when he first drove along that road in the eighties there were no other vehicles.  instead, there were leopards which became illuminated by the headlamps at night.  once one was caught leaping across the road chasing a deer before the headlamps startled it and sent it away.   it was a difficult place for me to find when i first arrived.  i had phoned when i arrived in kollur, but could only speak to somebody whose english i did not understand easily.  in the end, i got on a bus heading up the hill and got off somewhere not knowing where and began flagging down cars and asking people, and eventually got directions.   very few people knew the name bhaktivedanta; nor was the term ecovillage very helpful.  now i realise that hare krishna temple would have been the best label by which to identify the place.

i had already said hello to US volunteer danny and by the plate cupboard before prasada - food which has first been consecrated by being offered to Krishna - the first evening i had arrived, but it wasn't until the second day when she was watering the garden with the hose in the morning that i asked her, "can i ask you what you think of this place"

"really weird" came her quitely resolute response.

hmmm, i was sort of beginning to think along the same lines.  there was a certain quality of oddness about the place.  it is undeniably a beautiful place, a special spot, a special flourishing of abundant nature.  i joined the wedding party one day on the trek down to the waterfall; two hours through the deep forest, picking our trail carefully, the women in their saris carefully descending the steep sections to arrive at the ring of cliffs, ringed by sprawling forest and trailing vines and there to gaze in wonder at the curtain of water particles which start as flowing liquid water but gradually turn into shifting mesmerizing clouds of spray before lashing the rocks at the bottom.

praveem clamboured round the base of the cliffs and dislodged a long gleaming black snake which then slithered away to a hidden recess in the rock.  beholding its sinuous passage, i felt the snake's slithering energy slide into the scene and added to the magic of the hissing waterfall.  the woman then got out a big pot of spicy rice and ladeled it into everyone's outstretched hands.  i told the woman that i was surprised that the rice was warm but she thought i meant "hot, spicy".  i said "yes, it is nice and spicy, but the temperature is also warm... did you heat it up or was it just left in the pot in the sun??" but they did not get my line of questioning, so my comment had to remain ....mmm delighty and spicy.

it is hard to believe the temple is less than twenty years old; tattva said he lived under a sheet of plastic during his first year.  the wooden old hardwood carved columns must have been imported here from some other time, lending the temple its air of oldness.  when i first arrived i thought that the statue of prabhupada - the founder of the hare krishna movement - was probably a real person sitting in silent meditation but perhaps aware of my cautious movements.  it took me a while to muster the audacity to look directly into his reposed semi-closed statue eyes.  tattva is the initiator and head man of the community or village.  neither term really seems adequate.  i think many people have lived and do come to visit the place at times, but since i arrived there has only been tattva and a handful of volunteers and other local residents who arrive on mopeds to work during the day and other visitors who have came and left.  and a wedding party of twenty who came and spent two days.  tattva says that prabhupada recommended that hare krishna devotees get back to simple living off the land.  tattva says that if you come to chant mantras of devotion of krishna with a pure heart you will not feel tired.  he gets up at half four every morning to begin chanting.  i have never made those early morning sessions, but later in the morning, about seven or eight, the young russian couple often gather, and praveen - the indian with the hairstyle slightly reminiscent of a pineaple - will play the drum, and i have picked up the little symbols and clanged them together and listened to the hare krishna chanting and seen tattva at the front alter rotating something that looks like a feather duster, or rotating incense sticks, in devotion to krishna, or bringing round the candles for us to place our hands over and then touch our heads.  sometimes everybody gets down on knees with head on ground and responds with "jai!" to the lead mantra.  after that tattva reads from the srimad bhagavantam - principal holy scripture of krishna devotees - first in sanskrit and everybody does their best to repeat, then in english.  in the email with the information, tattva writes that anybody is welcome to volunteer regardless of their religious persuasion, but during the exposition part of the text - where tattva becomes very expansive and talks in a very relaxed and spontaneous fashion, peppering his krishna commentaries with manifold anecdotes from life and shows to me his great capacity as an orator - i say, during his speech, he says that we have all heard the call to krishna consciousness and have been set inexorably along that path, whether we know it or not at present.  that is the inescapable ultimate goal of all beings - to end the onerous cycle of birth and death, to attain the Godhead, to return to Krishna.  "all we have to do is make the choice to devote our lives to krishna in this lifetime and we can escape from the cycle forever". at first i wanted to be open and to listen to and perhaps to learn from and understand other walks of life, but something inside grew restless upon hearing tattva's unflagging infatuation with the goal of ending the cycle of reincarnation and the phrase "reglious fanatic" fluttered into my consciousness, and i saw danny outside and went out and asked her what she thought of this place.

it is a comfortable feeling to have a place to sleep at night and good food to eat, and there is plenty of varied tasks to do during the day - so far i have been helped weeding and planting in the garden, i spent a whole day fetching buckets of sand and gravel and mixing concrete to repair the front entrance, i spent another whole day assembling a life-size model representation of the different stages of life - from baby birth to old man falling down upon his stick to a recumbent skeleton - a popular hare krishna symbol showing the transitory nature of this life of the body.

tattva's girth errs on the generous side and i had questions regarding his daily routine when i first arrived (the question "who are you?" is generally silently on everybody's lips when they meet another person, although it is usually preceded by the question "where are you from?", which also gives a hint of an identity and is more straightforward to answer)  danny said that she asked tattva and he told her that he grew up in chicago "though that seems like a different life..." ; his accent still drawls in a midwestern way, slightly discernible even when he is chanting in sanskrit.   as the days went by, i discovered that tattva in fact has an unusual energy, almost never stops to rest, is as willing to put his back into hard physical labour as any of us, and is a never-ceasing fountain of new projects and clear ideas about what he wants.  he also is an aesthetician (i mean he pays attention to what looks good) he says things like "ah, leave those old logs where they are...they look good propped up against the stone".   caring about what looks good must be the cause of the large aesthetic appeal of the place.  when i said i liked to paint tattva was immediately interested.  even when i said i would take part in a full moon procession around a mountain in tamil nadu over christmas, and probably wouldn't come back, he told me how much would like me to paint the garden shed, "i could even give you some money, you know...it doesn't have to be a wwoofer thing"

trisha visited for a few days and shook a tambourine during puja (devotional chanting) and helped me to clear out the house where i would stay on top of the hill a few minutes from the temple.  she said "the religious attitude is essentially the same all over isn't it? i grew up going to catholic mass, and it feels very similar to the way we show devotion to krishna here"  i had also thought of the parallel experience of attending the liturgies at the orthodox monastary in france a year ago.  solemnity and shaking of incense.
how can anybody know that our souls can enter other material bodies here on earth after our deaths?  it is a question that is thrown up for our consideration, but how does one attain certainty of knowledge on that matter?  that is perhaps something which unites all religious beliefs - a knowledge, a certainty, a faith in the big questions of the wherefore of life and what happens after death.
another general feature of religions and something which i like - when religion is at is best -  its attempt to recognise the Divine Essence of Life.
my friend anita has questions regarding the use of religious language to describe the everyday.   this language exists and what meaning are we going to give to it?  what words are we going to use to describe this experience?  there are many differently nuanced ways of say the same essential thing.  Sacred Life = life is very special = i am filled with wonder by the Life Principle, the life principle overawes me.

life, yes

jenny from montreal arrived and did not attend the puja and said she finds the lack of genuine freedom of expression stifling in such gatherings.    so while evening puja goes on we climb up to the temple roof where we can hear the soft chanting from below and where we can dance freely under the brightness of the moon and see the stars coming out and the surrounding wooded hills becoming darker.

O my Energy where art thou?

it is clear that the ticket office at the railway station is a highly respect-worthy place to be because everyone (all the men) are wearing very clean, well-ironed shirts tucked into very clean, well-ironed trousers. nobody wears anything but sandels here.  first i struggled to see the order in the jostling crowd so i too began to jostle close
to the desk but then somebody gave me a gentle tap and indicated the back of the jostling queue and i realised that you couldn't just jostle anywhere you wanted and that there was such a thing as a back of the queue and a front of the queue.  only after an hour of queue was i told that i needed my passport to reserve a train ticket and two days later after only something slightly less than an hour was i told that i should in fact submit a photocopy of my passport.  having procured that across the road in a matter of minutes, i hovered near the desk again feeling reluctant to jostle but feeling reluctant to return to the back of the self-replenishing queue, my eyes looked into the watery blue eyes - amid a sea of dark glistening indian eyes - of a woman who indicated that i could jump in in front of her "you don't want to go to the back again"  her husband went off to get the
passport photocopies they had found out from me were requisite.  the woman had blonde hair and showed a stoical composure, underlain with a sense of humour.  she gave a half-roll of her eyes"it is mayhem buying a 
railway ticket" .  it didn't take me long to realise which part of the world she was from as i talked more she asked me where i was from..."oh aye, i know buckie, i used to holiday up there.  i'm from edinburgh"

so that was it; i had a ticket to Mangalore for the next day.  8 hours to Bangalore then a further 10 hours to Mangalore.  it felt good to soon be moving again - covering distance, crossing the land, eyes open to see the new sights in india.   Sadhana Forest has been a special place to spend time, for two weeks and ten days, but it is a little international pocket within india and my desire to travel is high. i have found out about another ecovillage - this one in the mountains  of Karnataka, composed of devotees of Hare Krishna.  their diet is also vegetarian.  they also do not eat eggs but they drink the milk and eat the cheese from Mother cow. 

i had so much energy after buying the train ticket in pondicherry.  i stopped and bought a fresh blended grapejuice from the fruitjuice stall then spun my way fast fast up the slope out of town back to sadhana.  it felt like i was a child again, playing micromachines on the sega mega drive.  i was pedalling as fast as i could overtaking some of the little mopeds trilling my bicycle bell to let everyone know that i was coming up behind them, never looking behind me when overtaking because if anybody was going to overtake they in turn would
honk their horn.  out of town all the people waiting for buses at the side of the road saw a blur of blue LA lakers basketball vest and shorts, as opposed to trousers and a shirt - enough to make their eyes linger on
the spectacle of me - not to mention my curly black hair and big round spectacles at the top of my tall body.  a linger-worthy spectacle speeding past on a big bike - triing, trriing! - on a hill on which most people only go slowly or get off and push.  indian bicycles have only one gear.

then i don't know where my energy went.  i was on the cooking shift from 3 to 6pm, chopping up tomatoes, onions, potatoes, garlic, carrots, pumpkin in our team of six, helping bruce the kiwi remove the massive black pan from the fire stove, draining off the tatties then making mash by him adding ladlefuls of tahini while i slowly stirred with my biceps.  i was using an oversized whisk but no whisking motion possible quantities are gargantuan.  a more than fifty strong community.  these cooking activities kept my energy necessarily lively, although i could feel it was draining.   but as soon as the pre-dinner half-hour's mediation commenced in the main hall - forming part of a global meditation to mark the twelfth of the twelfth of the twelfth, as Bhavya the girl from Delhi explained - i instead slunk off to my bed and became dead. in the sense that i did not want to move my body at all, apart from occasionally twitching my fingers and toes.  all energy had been robbed of me.  my thoughts are still active, i thought, while my body is immobile, as good as dead as regards ability to move.  the night went on and on and i had to walk like a zombie to the pit latrines many times, passing ghostily beneath the silhouetted banana fronds and papaya fronds and the fronds of the trees whose name i do not know, for reasons that pharmacies in pondicherry (where i had been buying diahorrea redydration sachets) will know about.

the next morning i continued to walk around like a zombie, soberly reflecting that i wanted to catch the mangalore express that afternoon, soberly reflecting that i didn't have enough energy to wash my bed sheets so how could i walk the two kilometres to the road to catch the bus to pondi?   then Sharon the german volunteer rubbed peppermint oil on my forehead, to draw away the pain...painkillers will only remove the symptoms of the headache, not the cause, but wow, miracle painkillers - give them to me anyway.  and people who saw me
smiled to me "i hope you feel better soon"   that must have done the trick because after slumbering the morning away, i woke up and felt that the oppressive cloud of weakness had been lifted and i was able to wash my sheets and take the books back to the library and pack my bag and at lunch time in the main hall i told everyone i was leaving and left a little sadhana forest notebook for anyone to leave their contact details. i said "but i have the feeling that i will be back.  sadhana has been a very special experience for me.  thank you all for your good looks and i thank the Universe for everything.   i recognise the divine in all of you.  Namaskar"  - palms placed together in prayerful posture.
english Natasha - who has lived in Barcelona for 18 years said to me  "you are a bit of a dreamer carson...just watch out"  i wanted to ask her "watch out for what?" but i didn't have time i had to get the train.  Sam gave me a moped lift along the dusty track to big road, slowing down in the village to avoid the potholes and young dogs and infant goats and hens and naked toddling children.  sam who had said "when your body is ill your whole being is unwell...you need to go through that state to experience healing, and renewal and rebirth". sam with the long hair and yogic consciousness and the beatific eyes. sam from new york.  "peace be with you brother.  we should hang out more extensively sometime"   we hugged and it felt good to be reborn.
then i hitched a lift into pondi.

thanks Universe!

i am running along the side of the road, barefoot, into the setting sun.   it has gone 17:10.    i am barefoot because i left the flip flops in the bicycle basket.    the smooth tarmac is warm to my skin which goes slap slap slap on the road.  sometimes i move over to the sandy verge when a big car comes up behind me going beep beep!
i am running because my bike was stolen earlier on today.   a busy street in pondicherry.   a thirty second lapse of attention in an ATM machine.
there are people who steal things.
i am running because community leaders at sadhana say it is unsafe to be out after dark, especially alone, so i am running to beat the clock.  i want to gain the sandy forest track before the sun has sunk too far beyond the horizon, taking it's light.  i met with couchsurfer emmanuel and when i told him about sadhana forest he was very interested in getting to know.  i said "well i am walking back there anyway" so he said "let's go!"  but in the end we got distracted by drinking iced mint tea in a roadside cafe and when it became apparent that the darkness was coming and there was still something like 10 kilometres to go, emmanuel walked back and i ran on.  emmanuel's couchsurfing profile states that he is 109 years old, so when in conversation he reveals that he is 24 years old, i say "i thought you were 109..." he smiles and says "yes...i wrote that to show how unimportant age is....all ages are the same.  how can i say i am twenty-four when i have already lived so many lives?"     i am running, the sun is setting then a man pulls in front of me with his moped and invites me to take a seat.  his only words comprehended by me are "only tamil", said with a smile.   after a while i give him a gesture which says i can walk but he insists on taking me beyond his turning for a further five kilometres, along the sandy track to sadhana forest, and leaves me there and repeats his smile and says "only help"
there are people who go spontaneously out of their way to help.  there are people who steal things but you cannot say "do not trust anybody" or else you would miss the kind people.

aviram, the rotund, bearded, gentle-eyed israeli who founded sadhana forest nine years ago, hears how the bicycle got stolen and asks me not to feel obliged to buy a new one and when i tell him that i would like to replace it anyway, he gives me a look full of kindness and says "thank you for your integrity".  it feels good when he says that.  i like aviram a lot.  he reminds me somewhat of l'homme qui plantait des arbres, only instead of planting trees in solitude, aviram invites a great transient traveller community to surround and make possible the project.  the US volunteers made a big meal for thanksgiving and while eating we went round in a circle and everyone said something they were thankful for.  it lasted the whole scrumptious dinner.  i said something short, i said "i would like to thank aviram and his family for creating this space to allow us all to come together, and i thank God for all of our hearts which  beat   so well"  many others became very eloquent and gave off great reels of thanks, often starting with "i wanna thank my mom for giving me life...".   at every meal, when everyone has been served, the person who is nearest the bells says "can we have a moment of silence please?" and everyone responds "yes!" then the chimey disks are made to give a high resounding chime and after a while, after a while, after a while, when they chime again, everyone chants out "thank you!" and aleric's midlands falsetto can always be heard chiming "thanks Universe!"

sadhana forest

the time is 2:51  in reality there are not many hours in the day.   in fact there are many of them.    hours filled with new activities, forest activities, living in the forest and replanting the forest.   i was full of experiencing the experience of being in india, learning to walk confidently along the street with my rucksack, not paying any attention to to the curious indian eyes, the reason is perhaps is because i am so tall, some sweetlime juice sellers admitted to me, learning to always ask price of things before engaging in anything involving handing over money, otherwise risking getting really 'fleeced', in the words of my chennai couchsurfer.  sweetlime juice could be twenty five rupees at the station or it could be 40 rupees at a swankier shop in pondycherry.       pondycherry a swankier place generally and they know how to cater for tourists.   it is 3:03   i am borrowing stewart's laptop but don't want to end up hogging it stewart from california just walked past eating a banana.  maybe he wants to use his laptop again.  i will write a couple of words first.  i am at sadhana forest reforestation project   an ecovillage.  i thought it would be similar to the other wwoof placements i had so far known, but in fact it is like nothing i had known.  i say i was full of the experience of being in india, but now i have entered some international place in the forest.  there are about thirty long-term community members and at the moment about forty or so short term volunteers.  minimum stay is two weeks.  the first day i walked in everyone was at work at their morning chores, they gave me big smiles, said 'have you just arrived? what's your name?'  there is such an aura of peace and calm here in the way that people interact.  it is quite a remarkable project they have set up.   one meta aim is to reforest the poor straggly existing land consisting of voracious nonnative species, dry runnels of spiny earth on account of the cyclones which sweep through periodically and cause erosion.  to achieve this aim a lot of time is spent building little mounded walls of earth to stem the flow of water off the land.   after these efforts, they say that the water table has risen six metres.  another aim is simply to live in community, sensitively.  i have never lived in such a sensitive way with so many other people.  we are not on the grid we have some solar panels which provide for our scant electricity needs.  all toilets are severely eco, no toilet paper is even encouraged.  all the human waste falls into big tubs which when full are left for months to hibernate and then go back to nourish the growth of the newly planted treelings.  the big huts are immense, beautifully architechted, requiring nothing but some stone plinths at base, then many logs and palm fronds and straw for the roofing, with gaps to let in plenty of light and allow the air to flow.  everyone gathers there to eat meals in a circle, it takes time to serve everyone up, it takes three hours to prepare in the morning.  we are encouraged (it is a community Rule) not to smoke, or drink alcohol, or take any mind altering chemicals, including coffee and tea.  they say their goal is to increase consciousness not dilute it.  we eat no packaged processed food.  we eat strictly vegan, but nothing is lacking, everything prepared is very diverse and satisfying and moreish, plenty of fresh fruit - papaya and pineapple for breakfast and bananas can be eaten throughout the day.  we wake up in the morning to the singing voices of the early morning group who play the ukilaylee and sing german songs, then we all stand in a circle and sing morning thankful for the new day songs and give each other hugs (not everyone actually, some others are still getting up)  then we carry all the crow bars and adzes to the plantation zone and get digging, surrounding each newly planted tree with a circular ditch which will aid with water retention in times of flood.   it is an amazing, everyone has the afternoons free (apart from the few souls who are part of the cooking team)  or else there are workshops offered by anyone who likes.  it is 3:25 and i must soon dash to catch one entitled 'getting to know thy inner self' (or something) .   it is starting to rain people are saying.  it has always been hot and rather muggy - walking about in nothing but a lunee sort of weather, but today the rain is coming.  till today everybody has been flocking religiously to the mudpool after morning work, where you can swim in the cloudy brown water then smear your body with mud and ly out in the sun till it cakes and cracks then wash your hair with mud and leave it smooth and feeling silky after rinsing.    it is 3:30 and i am stopping writing and going to the workshop, ciao

maneesh at the mudpool

dimitar and raj's performance, wednesday night non-talent show

communication sous entendu

it does seem rather unlikely that i am in india, sitting barefoot in a dusty internet joint above the beep beeep, beepbeepbeep beep beeeeep street, gently perspiring into my gently clinging shirt, wondering where i am going to wee when the time comes. i speak next to nothing of tamil.  however, all the well-dressed young males on the street so far have been obliging and english-spoken when imparting information regarding buses.  after some bus information impartation, one youth inquired whether i was here on business and then inquired where i was from.  "ah scotland, very nice place"  i was thinking of what response i could give to this "very nice place" and the first thing that came into my mind was, it is cold in scotland.  i also thought, the streets are very peaceful and orderly in scotland.   what is a place if it is not different from other places?  i thought of Stirling Castle, the Myth of the Loch Ness Monster, the Pap of Glencoe, the Isle of Lewis, the town of St Andrews, the Standing Stones of Stenness, the Linn o' Dee, the Brig o' Balgownie... i brought to mind the image of all these places and surmised that that youth's comment was a fair one: Scotland is a very nice place.   he was probably referring to education and health care.   i took one look at the boys running after the crowded buses ahead and then jumping and grabbing onto the exterior railing, letting their feet dangle inches above the fast spinning road, and thought: i have always wanted to be in India.  disinterest in considerations of safety, grabbing on for dear life, palm trees and woman wearing beautifully swishing saris, sitting on the ground to eat, playing adroitly with the rice dish on one's plate, forming it into a pickupable ball before adroitly flicking it into one's mouth, just as matthias told me, in asha niketan, the l'arche community in chennai.   mary, the current head of the community rolled her head from side to side, as a gesture of welcome, of agreement, of complicity, of are-you-following-what-i-am-saying? just as matthais told me.   mary was draped stylishly in a rich dark green sari and rolled her head from side to side in a most captivating way.  i already had written to asha niketan a week before i arrived, but having received no response, i decided to phone them directly the second day after arrival.  the person on the line listened to my story and said "could you wait a minute?" then someone else came on the line who listened to my story and said "sorry could you say that again a little slower?" then after a while said to me: "yes, come any time you want"   i went through the gradations of directness of communication, from an email to a phone call to actually finding their address and walking in and shaking their hands.  an email is like waving to somebody from afar, from the other side of a wide river, phoning is also akin to waving from a certain distance, but much closer.  and presenting oneself directly in front, hand extended ... there were great handshakes full of friendly welcome as soon as i walked into their dusty strip of ground flanked by buildings, palm trees and young banana trees.  there was an instant acceptance, a quality handicapped people are famous and wonderful for.  i don't know if all of them realised that i spoke no tamil - one woman certainly did, for every time i crossed paths with her she would break into smiles of joy and exclaim gleefully: no tamil!   me not speaking tamil was the least of our concerns because there was so much joy in her eyes. with another call member (call members they are called in that community) i tried to imitate the sounds he was making which at one point included a singsong na, na na na na naa! which i duly imitated and thenceforth often the crossing of our paths was heralded by such singing to each other.   there was one guy this morning who became intent upon revealing some fascinating pieces of information to me as we were sitting outside on the wall.  perhaps it was a story he was retelling.  it involved lots of engaging hand gestures. quite frequently i discerned the word chennai, and knew he was telling me something about the city.  samira was another frequently discerned word, and i imagined it was the name of a girl, whose exploits he was recounting to me with great intensity of emotion.  at one stage i thought i could also pick out the odd word in italian, or french or german, or even english, phrases such as: allontonare or allons-y or geben mir or wishfully or perhaps even pontificate.  i told myself that it was very improbable that he was in fact using such words that were known to me, they were but sounds familiar to my ear which i desperately wished to attach meaning to.   well, i began responding in a bit of german and in a bit of english anyway, as well as accompanying his flowing speech with regular mmmms and aaaah yeses, in order that the conversation were not so one-sided, and, rather than mocking his offer of communcation with my show of fictitious understanding (something which did cross my mind), i graudally understood he did actually understand every word which i offered in response, that there was a great stream of sous entendu communication taking place between us, and what was produced a veritable frenzied exchange of our impressions of life.  he became very eloquent with his hand gestures, at times holding his hand palm upwards and making a little thrusting forward motion, indicating something quick and snappy, other times adopting a sort of surfing pose, one arm outstretched confidently, communicating to me the idea of great elegance and balance and poise, and other times it was a simple finger held in front of his face that gave a deft little wiggle.  i reproduced all of these gestures as best i could and his face beamed with enthusiasm and after more than half an hour it seemed that such rich communication between us could have gone on indefinitely.

franci (one of the few call members whose name was not so unfamiliar to my ears that i could recall it) was one of the few call members who did not smile, rather she pouted, and fixed me with an apprehensive little glare.  however, she did want to communicate things to me and did so by grabbing my hand and leading me on a walk, sometimes to the prayer hall - a small round low building - where there is a copy of the bhagavad gita, the bible and the koran all placed side by side on little lecturns on a table at the front.  there is also a candle and incense spot at the front next to a wild wavy flowery circular design made with little grains of rice on the floor.   she chose a wicker seat by the wall and i sat down next to her and there we simply looked at each other.

flight time

it seems improbable that before a week is up i will be in india.   unlikely and improbable.
here i am wrapping up warm everytime i venture outside the house.  i have become accustomed to the yellow peeling leaves and the cool scottish air in autumn.  the cool autumn air in scotland.  here i am accustomed to cutting up root ginger into little pieces and letting them boil in water and infuse the water with fiery ginger warmth which makes the body glow from the inside.  somebody told me that they use a lot of ginger in their cooking in india.   sure enough, every time one scans the ingredients of a collection of spices called curry powder, ginger will be there.  how do i even know that india exists?  i have so far had no empirical proof, just documentaries seen on tv, and everytime i open an atlas i see the representation of a pointed mass of spicy land thrust southwards from the himalayan chain, protruding into the indian ocean, full stopped by a signature sri lankan teardrop.

it seems improbable that saudia arabian airlines have agreed to take me with them to india.   however, all i need to do is go to my emails and there is the invoice corroborating that i will indeed fly with them.  improbable and unnecessary.  why do i need to be whisked through the air at such a speed?   i wanted to travel gently, sensitively, i wanted to observe, i wanted to inch my way across the land, i wanted to feel the entire length of turkey, i wanted to traverse iran, to meet the iranians and meet the pakistanis and feel myself getting closer and closer to india.  i wanted.... i wanted...... it can't be lamented now.   i can't believe how much arbitrary authority those visa authorities have, at the mere flick of a pen they can decide the travel itinerary of a poor visa applicant.   first of all i applied and they objected to my passport being tatty.   "damaged" was the word they used (admittedly i had not looked after it over the years.)  then i reapplied with a shiny new passport and they informed me that i could not enter india in may, as i had requested, that if they were to give me a visa it had to become valid immediately.  how do some people manage to achieve adventurous long-distance bicycle itineraries in the face of such adamantine visa limitations?  perhaps if i had gone to the visa application centre in person and voiced my objection in a resonable tone of voice and with a look of sincerity in my eyes... perhaps, in a less principled society, i could have slipped somebody a note somewhere and thus have been granted my desired visa and granted permission to follow my desired path.

in any case, i am cognisant of the great freedom of choice in my movements across the planet which puts me in a far more privileged position than the majority of world citizens who are cornered and clustered by the authorities in the same way that a crochety shepherd herds his troop of sheep.

i couldn't really give a comprehensive account of why exactly i have chosen to fly to india.  i could call it a calling but i could likewise say that i simply want to be there.  it actually feels like there is an invisible cord which links me to the indian landmass, and which has been tugging at me with undisguised insistence for the last couple of years.  it is like an attraction between two people, or between two magnets, undeniable, irrepressible, implacable, unflagging.   i think maybe i will meet somebody there who will change my life, or maybe someone else will meet me, and i will change their life.   in any case, i feel that this tugging has gone on for long enough now, and the most opportune thing for me to do at this juncture is to forget about cycling (toilsome activity that it is) and to just fly there and get shot of the thing and then be able to get on with my life.

a wee walk up bin hill

it sometimes happens in autumn that you get crisp clear sunny days

 mum and i took a wee walk up bin hill yesterday afternoon

 shafts of sunlight were streaming through the trees

it was still nippy in the shade, but we got climbing the hill and soon our moving bodies generated their own warmth

i climbed a tree.

i thought i could capture the flaming orange beech leaves contrasted against a faroff pale blue sky with my camera.

but, in reality, it was better in reality

(a pale off flar bue sky)

mum was waiting for me at the top, and walked in front of the sun just at the moment when i pressed click

there was a certain nippy wee edge to the breeze that nudged its chilly way across the top of the hill

so we climbed down a bit

and got the flasks of tea out. 

i took this photo of us two while the sun was shining bright and making me squint a little

mum was alright cos she had tinted glasses

it is great to get out and fill your lungs with fresh air and fill your eyes with good views. 

a little bit of exercise also makes you appreciate your evening meal all the more.

it is nice to be outside but it is also nice to come back to a warm house.

on the way back home we noticed that somebody had streaked the western sky with flamboyant pink and yellow lines

i was so impressed i got mum to stop and i jumped into the field to take another photo

mamma mia, bello bello -  una bellezza incantevole

i can't help talking to myself in italian in matters relating to Beauty.

remarkable encounters

"the leaves are very similar to those of a beech tree - it could actually be a beech tree - but the leaves are glossier.  they seem somehow more robust.  the branches, certainly, are more robust.    a little lithe branch the size a little thicker than your thumb would hold your weight.   however, its littleness and litheness does not compromise, by any degree, its strength.   the whole tree in fact shines with robustness, exudes Robustness and Beauty and Grace.   the tree rises to about, about the height of a three-storey house and then the big robust branches spill down gracefully like the water after an upward jet in a fountain, but actually growing gradually outward, in the shape of a steep pyramid.  like a candle that severely loves to melt.

an exemplar of a tree of the same genus, here in Hyde park, London
(photo courtesy of friend francis)

man, what a tree.

a noble tree.  we climbed from the inside, never straying far from the dark trunk.   friend francis cautioned against being spotted by the police officers, which we had just seen as we entered the park.  what!  i thought, how could they object to the beautiful action of getting close to such a tree?   the inside of the tree is like a tepee because you can't see beyond the flowing curtain of glossy leaves on the outside.
being at the top gave an unparallelled sensation of being at the top of something really sacred and noble and monumental, like a little himalayan peak, in the shape of a tree, in a park in oxford.   friend francis was like a monkey.  he climbed down one of the downward flowing external branches.  i didn't have enough confidence.  i was archly aware of the distance separating me from the ground, and slowly picked my way down, keeping close to the trunk in the gathering gloom".



i was telling this to brother finlay as we were heading to the abandoned house, just outside st andrews, when suddenly we caught sight of exactly the same noble tree, only a little less tall, and a little less conical,  its downward flow interrupted by the excrescences of exploratory uprising branches.

we set about climbing her immediately, unhurridly.  the diaphanous daylight of the midafternoon was the ideal occasion to become aquainted with that tree.  to become aquainted with a tree, to become intimate with her.  to hug her branches with all of one's will, it is an embrace which is intimate and necessary for one's safe passage along her lithe but robust limbs.

a lithe tree, a beaming, green tree.

a tree growing exultantly.

a tree to be proud to be aquainted with.








another remarkable encounter was produced a few days later, after spending the afternoon hitch-hiking to aberdeen, after standing at a layby in the gathering gloom thinking: most likely i will head into those fields and pitch my tent somewhere, then being picked up by a geologist who told me about his project to build a house on the ruins of an old farmhouse overlooking the sea to the south of stonehaven, then walking through the streets of dark aberdeen, in the direction of seaton park where i planned to sleep by the river, and then catching sight of steve addy, an old acquaintance from the university of aberdeen climbing club, who strode past me in his characteristic brisk pace.
"steve!" i said.
"carson!" he said  "i half wondered if it was you . . . fancy coming to my house for a cup of tea?"

a cup of tea, which turned into a plate of pasta, which turned into an evening of pleasant conversation.  i told steve about my plans to head soon to Iona, and do a painting of the beach there, and steve told me about finlay wild's paintings of familiar scottish highland peaks, made unfamiliar through his use of wild flamboyant colours for sky and hill, only recognisable by the unique shape of the hills.   at one point steve got out his african bongo drums and we had a session in his kitchen, which was very satisfying - feeling our way through a repertoire of rhythms recorded in our memories, looking at each other quizically every so often, wondering where the rhythm would take us.  after a cosy night's dreaming on his living room sofa, and after some breakfast the next morning, i said to steve: "i am very glad to have been deflected on my route to seaton park."




another remarkable encounter had been produced when i was hitching to the vineyards.  i got as far as reims, then misread the bus timetable, then spent a while admiring the imposing cathedral (see photograph below), then discovered i had missed the last bus and walked in the gathering gloom to the big road which leads to the motorway south and stuck my thumb out and thought: "most likely i will sleep somewhere in the park, then get the bus tomorrow, and miss the first day picking grapes" but very soon a sleek low-slung sports car stopped and a business-looking man ushered me in saying "it was only by faulty-route-finding that i was passing through the centre of reims".  he was going all the way to geneva.  he told me that he had hitchhiked in his twenties through USA and canada, and had lived in the USA for seven years.  i told him that his english accent was incredibly english sounding, with no hint of US twang.   he replied crisply: "yes, i was careful not to let myself become . . .
infected"   
everything he said he said crisply and deliberately.   he said that he commutes regularly between geneva and his company somewhere north of Reims, and every so often he stopped for hitchhikers, but added: "i do not stop for every hitchhiker that i see.   there are some that would make my car . . .
smelly."

conversation was sparse.  towards the end of the lift i asked him what he worked as and he told me that he had set up a company that gave pilot runs for the fastest newest cars on the market.   he said that the car we were in was capable of doing 300km/hr, but that it often wasn't practical to go at such a speed.  for me it was my first experience of sustained fast road travel, for he cruised along the motorway at a steady 180km/hr for over an hour, gliding easily past all other vehicles and very soon i had been dropped off near Troyes.  there remained about 25km to the place where i would pick grapes, of which i walked about 10km along a quiet road under the stars until someone else stopped for me, having spotted my piece of cardboard upon which i had painted "Les Riceys."  he said to me, "i knew you would be here for the vendanges, heading to les riceys with your rucksack."

it felt a bit miraculous to walk into the salon at 11:30pm and be welcomed by a little group of that year's grape-pickers, among whom was marie, who gave me a big hug and insisted that we had met at a party in paris back in february.

it took me about twenty minutes for the memory of that encounter to come back.

it is funny that it can take about twenty minutes for one's memory to dredge up an event which is actually lodged firmly in one's mind but which initially remains concealed from memory's probing feelers.

Reims cathedral

after the grape-harvest

uuuuuun rayon de soleil

sur ton si beau visage

those words sung in the happiness-filled reggae cadence of william balde entered my ears through the mp3 player which virginie from montpellier had lent me one afternoon, and seemed to me to be the perfect soundtrack to the grape picking season - a ray of sun on your so beautiful face - the rolling cadence of the land strung with vibrant green rows of vines sometimes as far as the eye could see in southern champagne.   the eye could see.  the swollen song of solomon bunches of purple grapes - the bountry of nature, nature's harvest, her fruit at the end of a year's growing and energy transfer.  investing one's interest in those grapes, seeing nothing but those grapes, the secateurs going clip clip clip, working as a team of thirty, clipping in unison, giving each other bleak looks of back weariness towards the end of the week, but strength in our thirty-strong unity, exchanging back massages in the evening, i look for her eyes in the vineyard, the sun is warm and bathing, across the rows and rows of greenleaved vines everyone is crouching down, clip clip clip, she stands up and looks for my eyes and we instantly smile and lower our gazes, the grapes, stained with white powder from the sulphates, clipping, a bucket filling up with bunches of grapes.  adele, she called herself; belle adele i called her, i said: elle s'appelle adele et elle est belle.

thirty people all come together, and not all the time does each person know what to say to the other people.  benois was sitting across the table from me one evening.  until then all we had done was exchange wide probing smiles so after asking his name for the second or perhaps the third time i said: "benois - that must come from the latin blessed.  it is a good name.  it recognises the favourable general situation of being alive - being blessed - being favoured by god, god in his favour has said: be alive benois"
what i wanted was to say something positive to benois.  i often find myself commenting on a person's name when i learn it for the first time.   for example gery introduced me to solange a few nights ago and i said "hmmm solange, never heard that name before.  first of all it makes me think of the english expression so long, and then it makes me think of the french word louange, which comes from louer...to praise, doesn't it?"   she said yes and gery said "tu vois, carson est un peu...particulier"
it reminded me of how marie described herself once.  "je suis"
then lowering her voice, as if confiding a hushed tone "un peu differente"

un peu differente was the perfect description of marie.  in a hushed tone.  i had first met marie in a party in paris and had picked up on her use of the word mec, "doesn't mec have a masculine value, like guy or dude in english?" (marie spoke english like an american and so understood perfectly) she said yes, but you know i feel more male than female.   blonde-haired marie; once she crammed her bosom full of grapes and stuck bits of vine and leaves in her hair and crept along the vines to 8-year-old margot and there stood rigidly against the vines saying "shhhhh, je suis une vigne"
marie studied theatre in paris and loved to impersonate other people.   so much so that i strugged to form a good idea of who she really was.  it seemed to me that she really wasn't; she was but a vehicle for impersonating other people.    i can understand her being fascinated by other people, and wanting to try to impersonate them.  as we advanced along the rows of vines her voice could be heard moodily, sultrily, nonchantly impersonating some stereotypical blasé french attitude that has made an impression on her. 
"bah, franchement, je m'en fous, tu sais?"
je m'en fous.  one spends time in france, listening to the french and perceiving something of their attitude.  the je m'en fous attitude.  menefregismo.  i couldn't care less, i don't give tuppence, twit-twoo i don't give two hoots, i don't give a damn, i don't give a dickeybird.  i don't give

not give


give


after i said that benois gave me a little rundown of his life philosophy, unblinking, his eyes devoid of warmth, he said "bah, franchement, i really have no opinion about the fact that i am alive.  i could just as well not be alive, for all it concerns me.  of course, i am not going to go and commit suicide, but franchement the notion of death holds absolutely no fear or dismay for me"

it remended me of the indifference shown towards life by the main character of albert camus' l'etranger

but there was warmth and flickering happiness in benois' eyes when our eyes met at other times, and i know that his je m'en fous words were not completely sincere.

17-year-old hugo, at times displaying a wisdom far beyond his years, but at other times undeniably 17 years old, asked me what were the typical characteristics associated with the french.  i had commented on the rather widespread readiness to express irritation at little everyday contretemps, and hugo had responded "ah, but we are not really irritated you know.  we say putain merde often only in mock irritation"

the words ah, putain - merde - ca fait chier - ca m'enerve quoi entered my consciousness and i started to think like that too.  when learning a language you are essentially imitating the way the native speakers speak. however, within that group of native speakers one must discriminate.   griet taught me about discrimating between words when i swung past l'arche community on the way back.  a new volunteer - a lithuanian learning french - had exclaimed putain, reenacting the very common exclamation of surprise or irritation on the lips of the french, and griet responded "ah, j'aime pas ca, c'est pas la bonne usage de ce mot-la"
he had taken the putain's name in vain.

fabri and i were fond of filling the vineyard with vibrations of taize chants of praise, sometimes soft and tenderly intoned, other times extravagently low and solemn sounding:

Ostendi nobis domine
misericordium suam
amen, amen!
maranatha, maranatha!

other times a long rumbling rendition of jeff buckley's rendition of leonard cohen's alleluya, along to the clip clip clip of our secateurs.  little hugo would say aimlessly "they are church songs aren't they?" and then fabri would go off on a tangent and laugh like a hyena, or else we would send up dog howls, a mournful orchestra of howling dogs which other vendangeurs would join and it would end in a cacohpony of baying bleating barking neighing miaoing and cockadoodle-doing from across the animal kingdom. the best was the horse's neighing but the absoulte best was melanie's extraordinary imitation of a young goat bleat . everyone laughed then and she would distribute her bleats throughout the day, often at the table in the evening, at a moment when conversation had largely subsided, the goat would give her pathetic charming bleat and everybody would laugh.

petite and charming, with sparkling eyes, that is why it suprised me on the last day of the vendange to hear melanie exclaim "ah, j'ai marre de cette vigne de merde!"

apres les vendanges, after the grape-harvest gerard gave us all about three bottles of champagne each and we all headed off in various vehicles to jean-batiste's house fifty kilometres away in the countryside - a beautiful place to stay - a simple wooden chalet surrounded by pine woods and caravans for everybody to sleep.  we got a big fire roaring and roasted potatoes over the embers and grilled chops of pork and sat around the picnic table eating.  from somebody's van stereo toots and the maytals were playing.   copious bottles of champagne had been opened - pop pop pop! - and got us feeling fine.  i said:  that is another characteristic of the french - well, at least a characterisitc which one finds with a certain frequency among the french - a real appreciation of the good things in life.  good food, good wine, good music, a good fire.  an incredibly sexy language.  ah oui, i can really sympathise with that french national pride.  i think that if i was born french i would love that fact.

afterwards fabri and i didn't know what to do.  fabri had suggested we go to the alps and climb mont blanc and usually when we are together and one of us suggests that we climb a mountain the other one says "okay".  we got on the same train as adele and celine, going south, and when we stopped at macon i said "hey, lets go to taize!"   all the songs that fabri had heard me sing, but had never heard himself were sang in the church that evening, and next morning: Ostendi nobis...!

and

il signore ti ristora
dio non allontana
il signore viene ad incontrarti....viene ad incontrarti

and

tu sei sorgente viva tu sei fuoco sei carita
viene spirito santo, viene spirito santo

and in between we camped in the woods, opened a bottle of champagne by the fire and played chess until at one point droplets of water began to fall.  fabri suggested that we seek shelter in the church but instead i pitched my little tent, and we snuggled in.   then at one point it began to really lash.  my tent is not of the best quality, and largely lets lashing water in.  however, the one impermeable impenetrable part is the groundsheet and there a pool of water grew.  we stuck it out anyway and i lay with heart throbbing as everything outside the tent was illuminated by flashes of lightning, then the enormous cracking thunder split the atmoshpere in two and it seemed that even the earth beneath us was rumbling.  
the next day we got the bus back to macon and there i decided to head back to the uk and get cracking with applying for visas while fabri said he would return to southern italy.  before we parted, we opened the last bottle of champagne and sat drinking on the street, stretching out the tent and sleeping bags to dry in the sun and played a last game of chess, before the owner of a nearby carrefour addressed us and told us we had five minutes to clear off because, franchement, camped out on the street like that, (it didn't take her long to find the word) was dégueulasse.

fabri and i spent a while impersonating all the french people we had met before returning to our respective home nations.