joshimath

The Mountains and the Trees and everything in nature are the monuments erected by the Force of Life to the everlasting praise of the Great God

the people bending over terraced fields of grain fertilized by the ash of smokey fires takes my imagination to the dawn of civilisation

ah, the beauty of a well-made path, and anything constructed by human hands, filled with the intention of its use.

in hindi they are very fond of the sound aa

it fills the mouth with long natural aachchhaa vibrations

amidst these wild and rocky hillsides and gorges how does the road manage to snake its vehicular way?

the buzzing energy of being with people compared to the solitude of the forest

i am travelling in unexplored regions.

i have never been on such a journey

happy holi

every day can be a festival for an individual soul; a festival of light (diwali), a festival of shadow, a festival of chiaroscuro (yes! of chiroscuro), a festival of mountains, a festival of trees, a festival of sky, a festival of boiled eggs, a festival of Jesus Christ emerging from the tomb, a festival of self-realisation, a festival of contemplation on the Divine Mystery of womanhood, a festival of the Universal Soul, vibrating in the deepest darkest corners of this endless empire of Reality.

holi is the hindu festival of colours

i knew that 12 year old Agman was extra specially enthusiastic when he shouted "hello, hello!" the first time he saw me on the street, walking out to my encampment in the woods.  the next day he and his brothers came to my encampment and told me formally to come to their family celebration of the holi festial.  

"you will come?  okay, i will meet you on the road at half past six" 

but    i don't have a watch... 

i know: i will meet you on the road when it gets dark, when the first stars come out.

 although that first evening there was a certain awkwardness, the ten sisters and ten brothers giving me an ovation when i arrived to stand around the family courtyard, searching for things to say, waiting for it to get dark to light the bonfire, the next day as soon as i appeared everyone hailed me, "Happy Holi!" and covered my face and hair affectionately with fingerfulls of multicoloured powders: red, yellow, orange, dark purple, vibrant rose - even green and blue.  everyone was dancing with great mirth and natural ease.  i felt relaxed at once and marveled at the sheer happiness which was being produced.  they had all decided to get together and be happy, and this they achieved with innocence and panache.  they were innocent holy revelers fully aware of the joy of living.  all the young sisters gave me couqettish glances and looked away timidly when they saw me admiring their dancing style - their hands joined in the centre dancing like dignified snakes while they all moved round in a circle.  the older men were full of youthful alegria and sneaked up behind unsuspecting family members to jump on them and smear their faces with more powder.  other family members pounced on the scrum and their pure sunny sky-blue happiness shone to all corners of the globe, probably.  later buckets of water were brought out and turned the powder into a dark paste, clinging to everyone's faces and clothes.  after a while we went out to visit several of the neighbours' houses.  on the street strangers going by on mopeds were hailed and smeared in the same spirit of felicity and fraternity.  at other people's homes we were welcomed with more happyholi colour-smearing and fried pastry sweets filled with a light coconut and grain filling.  i was always ushered toward a seat and plates of sweets and crisps and nuts were pushed in front of me, and twice i was offered 'hard drink' - indian military rum, slightly less than tasty and served in a plastic cup.  the majority of indians i have met are tee-totalers.   in india the action of drinking wine (all alcoholic drinks are called wine) has a general whiff of dissipation about it.  Sanjay, the uncle who spoke most english and who was most keen to engage with me, declined to drink, but told me that: "one hundred, two hundred millilitres of rum is okay, but when it gets to 700ml, then you go from a drinker to a drunkard!"

we talked along the road together and sanjay told me how happy he was that i could join in their holi celebrations.  i told him i was so happy to encounter such spontaneous happiness, and friendliness.  it brought to my mind the image of a fire.  say there are three logs.  the fire burns but when a fourth log is added the total fire is bigger, and each individual log also burns brighter.

i meant to compare us to logs on a fire burning with happiness!

Sanjay explained that in the past the fire symbolised a certain evil spirit whose destruction was celebrated the following morning by smearning the ashes on people's faces.  over the years, manufactured coloured powders have come to be used.  the many colours are a symbol of the human diversity in india.

"you are my brother" i was told,

"all of them are my brothers, not just in my family, but everyone.  in india there are many different religions but we are all have - he told me the word in hindi and i guessed - universal brotherhood.

and.....

not just in india, but in the whole world.  everyone is my brother and sister!

"this is a time for people to be together, and, if disagreement between people, today they are friends...",

 i was told in carefully remembered english.

is it like this in your country? what festivals do you celebrate?

i said:  "christmas is the biggest festival for us...a time to be with family

there is also easter, 

"when Jesus rose from the dead!" chipped in Agman, "we celebrate Christmas too"

Agmen and his brother given me a full explanation of the signification of the two shrines in their land - which was almost like a compound, where aunts and uncles and cousins and gradparents all lived together.  one shrine was dedicated to Nagaraja, the snake god, and the other to the god whose name i forget, who has the body of a man and the head of a leeon

"a lion?"

yes, and many other details of their attributes which i fail to retain in my memory, explicated in their basic grasp of english, amazing i thought how young and how naturally the children assimilate awareness of the hindu gods

sanjay

some of Swami Rama's words

i want to write like Swami Rama whose words perfectly convey the depth of his experience and the clarity of his thinking.  every word he writes is essential, and he avoids the extraneous grouping of ramified excrescent adjectives.  he will pin the nub of meaning concisely with one exact word, for he realises the power of words.

here is a sample, from his book Living with the Himalayan Masters:


"Ways of East and West
  Our culture does not allow one to get married without the consent of other family members, while the culture of the west believes in a free social life.  A Christian can get married to anyone, and the Jewish do likewise.  Of course their ways of worshiping God are set in a fixed particular style, while we worship the way we like and choose the path of enlightenment we want.  We are free-thinkers but we are in the bondage of social laws, and they are in the bondage of certain fixed ideas in their way of thinking and worshiping.

Both the East and the West are part of the same world with the same purpose of life.  Inner strength, cheerfulness, and selfless service are the basic principles of life.  It is immaterial whether one lives in East of West.  A human being should be a human being first.  Geographical boundaries have no powers to divide humanity.  Freedom from all fears and awareness of reality within: this message of Himalayan sages is timeless and has nothing to do with primitive concepts of East or West.

Contemplating the single query "who am I" leads to self-realization.  This method of contemplation is the foundation stone of both East and West philosophies.   It is the Iliad in a nutshell.  By knowing oneself, one knows the self of all.

No-one can be enlightened by anyone else, but sages inspire and give inner strength without which self-enlightenment is impossible.  Today, humans do not have any example to follow.  There is no one to inspire them, and that is why enlightenment seems so difficult.

Man's highest destiny is to be fully aware of the universal spirit and thus advance the cause of evolution.

The body is a temple and the inner dweller, Atman, is God.  A human is a miniature universe, and by understanding this, one can understand the whole of the universe.

and ultimately realize the Absolute One.

All the great religions of the world have come out of one Truth.  If we follow religion without practising the Truth, it is like the blind leading the blind.  Those who belong to God love all.  Love is the religion of the universe.

The last thought before you go to bed should be: "O Lord, be with me.  I am Thine and Thou art mine."  The whole night the Lord will remain with you.

You cannot change your circumstances, the world, or your society to suit you.  But if you have strength and determination you can go through this procession of life very successfully.

In India, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, and Sufis have lived harmoniously for many centuries.  India is a melting pot.  Whoever visits India gets into this pot.

The poisonous tree of life has but two fruits: contemplation on immortality, and conversing with the sages.

The pearl of wisdom is already hidden within the shell in the ocean of the heart.  Dive deep and one day you will find it.  A true follower of ahimsa does not believe in disappointment.  He dwells above in perennial happiness and peace.  That peace and joy do not come to those who are proud of their intellect and learning, they come to those who are full of faith.

There are various modes and levels of suffering, but ignorance is the mother of all.

One's mantra becomes one's staff of life and carries one through every ordeal.  Each repetition has a new meaning and carries one nearer and nearer to God.  It is capable of transforming that which is negative into that which is positive, and it can gradually integrate divided and opposing thoughts at deeper and deeper levels of consciousness.

I lived with him for three days.  My stay with him was very enlightening.  It was one of the best times of my life.  He taught  me many things.  Many times each day he repeated the same phrase:
  "Be that which you really are; don't pretend to be what you are not."

That place is very serene and beautiful.  At the top of the tall hills that surround the valley one can see the long ranges of the Himalaya as though all the snowy peaks are tightly clinging to one another and are determined to stand firmly from eternity to eternity.

Whenever I used to sing, compose a poem, or paint my master objected.  He advised me to avoid such diversions and to practice silence.  He would say: "The voice of silence is supreme.  It is beyond all levels of consciousness and all methods of communication.  Learn to listen to the voice of silence.  Rather than discussing scriptures and arguing with sages, just enjoy their presence.  You are on a journey; don't stop for long at one place and get attached to anything.  Silence will give you what the world can never give you."












but then again, i am not Swami Rama and i must choose my own words,
forgo my own fraudulent foes.

goa

certain things are becoming more familiar to me here in india, like the long looks which people will give me and which i now expect and which i can choose to return or not.  still, the question occasionally runs through my mind:  what is it like to be you seeing me?   whence come my celebrity status which i carry around with me, provoking the questions whichcountry and yourgoodname? and handshakes and sometimes the request that my photo be taken alongside.  and sometimes when i board a crowded bus a seat is precipitously vacated for me.  is it because of the colour of my skin? and what subconscious impressions are awakened in me by the colour of thy skin? is there any way to redefine the descendant of colonising group/descendant of colonised group discourse?  i never expected so many people to enter the general class train compartment.  when it seemed like it had already become very full, at the next station more people would pour in and we all became royally squashed like sardines, very intimate one could say but at the same time simply sharing space on a train.  swinging a cat would have been impossible.  at one point it struck me as a good idea to sit in the toilet, there enjoying the relative luxury of several square metres of unoccupied air space, but then i remembered the smell of urine, and the fact that other people would probably come and want to use the toilet alone.  travelling on the roof on such high-demand trains, it seemed to me, would be a very practical solution.

after a while the group of adolescents who were pressed against me swapped their flighty probing glances for a few faltering questions.  they found out i was from scotland.  they partially discovered the contents of my rucksack.  they slowly learned the price of my arrival airplane.  i only partially understood the last question, and i was only partially reluctant to answer it, how much money do you have on you? when the train stopped and i decided it would be considerably more comfortable to travel with a little more personal space.     i found an empty luggage compartment - not normally intended for passenger travel - and quickly jumped in and before the train departed i was joined by a group of grinning young men.  no english, and so a chance for me to pull out my fledgling hindi.  they were builders.  they built houses.  maybe they could come to scotland and build houses, they wanted to know.  i was travelling in india because...i liked india very much.  so much colour, so many fruits, so many people, so much . . . life.

i knew the fruits was by the by but, turning the question over in my mind, i struggled to put my finger on just what india was for me, or why i liked being in india.  the people must be a big part of it, but who are the indians? what qualities can be ladled upon them.  there is much diversity there.  there is a general respect towards the other i would say, but like all generalisations. . . brazenness can be found too.  men pissing in anywhich public place.  men clearing their throats and launching great gobs of spit onto the pavement.  i heard somebody make this comment recently: for indians their entire country is a litter bin.  and for indian men the entire country is a toilet.  later, prateek from delhi considered this topic and said: yes but where else will we put our litter and piss if the government do not provide a litter collection service and public toilets?   the generality of indians don't do not often choose to swim in the sea or in rivers and lakes, although the ritual of washing on the banks of a river is very common.  not revealing one's nudity, even while bathing, is a universally made choice.   a widespread acceptance of what is puts my finger close to it.  travelling ungrumbling like that like sardines in the train.  

i came to goa spurred on by a loosely-arranged laconic tryst with Inga, a couchsurfer from Estonia, who had written to me with the words "if you want to meet I'll be at Sporting Heros bar on the main street in Arambol at 10.   (10pm)"
as it happened, to this day, we have not yet made our acquaintances, but Inga's invitation was a necessary step along the enchanted path which i subsequently followed.    i told a ginger-haired Russian on the bus to Arambol about Inga and he told me about a peaceful place to sleep out, "from the main beach, if you follow the coast round a rocky headland, you get to another smaller, quieter beach.  behind the beach is Sweet Lake.  if you walk round the lake then follow a small river up through the trees, after fifteen twenty minutes you will get to the Banyan tree"  so armed with this enchanting description and my flashlight, illuminating the forest evening gloom, i stumbled upon my camino of incantation.  Hari Baba's formal greeting was thrown out to the inquiring light of my torch, "Hare HAR"
"hello"
namaste, i climbed into the simple encampment of mats on ground, oil candles dotted around, a fire in the middle. i say i am looking for somewhere to sleep and am told that i can sleep right here.  a plate is pushed in front of me: "jungle pancake brother".   it seemed like i entered Hare Baba and Anil Baba's simple jungle society with the same natural flowing motion with which a river enters the sea.   the Banyan tree was a further 5 minutes walk up the hill, where other babas were encamped. many foreigners and wanderers passed there throughout the day, removing footwear and bowing to the assembled company before joining the circle and passing round the chillum pipe.   i climbed the banyan tree and then became quite fascinated by observing the loose sketching style of a youth from florida who soon engrossed me with a rambling curious generous intellectual foray which left me with a wondrous impression of the concentrated flow of energy along the spinal column, culminating at the base of the brain.  i think he knew that the design of his rambling dialogue was to provoke wonder in the mind of the listener, rather than delivering any serious scientific commentary.

i love to draw too.  to draw is to try and capture the moment in which the eye sees the world.  like writing, drawing is distancing oneself from the moment, for the sake of the moment's posterity.  or is drawing to inhabit the moment more fully?  it is shifting all of one's focus onto form.  writing is still too mysterious to comment on.  is communication the central thrust of words?   words are a liminal veil between something real and throbbing, and something more intellectual, more distanced.   words are a testimony that one has had a particular thought in one's mind.  words are the fruit of the intellect playing with memories of the world.  words themselves are born in the pulsating beat of the present moment and will always belong in the now.  i suppose i didn't really think you were Inga.  Inga had blonde hair on her profile picture whereas your hair is . . . mmm .golden.   but what matters, we are talking to each other now.  i like talking with you

Hare Baba emanated great peaceful waves of stability and friendliness. sometimes Babaji would be down at the river washing the cups when our eyes would meet and they were full of a simple, smiling, sixty-year old childesque happiness.  he will never be at cross-purposes with anyone.  he reminded me of Baloo from the Jungle Book, albeit with a little less of Baloo's insistency (although that was probably specific to the urgency of Mogley's situation).  maybe that impression was fuelled by their self-description as "jungle people".  meeting Anil dispelled my impression that it is the aspiration of all young indians to wear a freshly pressed freshly laundered shirt.  for him the tripartite quintessential good morning consisted of chai, chillum and chapattis. on a couple of mornings, after my enquiry, that list expanded to include chess.  Anil suggested that i might like to climb the coconut palm nearby, for there were some very pendulous coconuts to be had.  i followed the sinuous trunk snaking high into the sky with my eyes and, after a while, commented:  "that would take a lot of energy
and a lot of courage"   a cloud of chillum smoke.  Hare Baba, before smoking the pipe, ritualisitcally called out "Hare HAR", then "mahedev" almost as an aftermutter, which he told me was another name for Shiva.  before passing on the pipe, he would announce it with a resounding "BOOM"; these calls also served as greetings to those approaching the encampment, or to announce one's return from the village.

after perhaps five days i realised it was time to leave.  Hare Baba gave me the directions for catching the 4pm Goa Express to Delhi, and wrote down a list of places to pass through on the way to Kathmandu.  he gave an extra special salutation upon my departure, calling upon a range of presumed deities, laying his hands on my head and leaving me his mobile number, saying "maybe see you in Kathmandu"

it is not unusual to be loved by anyone.

it is not unusual to travel for 39 hours by train.

it is not actually all that common to feel such a strong simple vibrant attraction to a girl, like some crazy mysterious fate-decreed obsessive bond.  

i am travelling by train to Delhi and all i can think about is a Russian woman named Auxana.

on the road again, south india

i had drawn a zebra onto julia's jeans- something i had been saying i would do for a while - and mateia had regaled everybody with estrafalarious tales of her travels in mozambique and senegal.  we had drunk a copious quantity of ginger and jaggery infusion, and now mateia and i were back at the wwoofer's house on the hill, sitting round the bright blaze of the fire on my last evening.  

verde que te quiero verde - these words floated into my consciousness while we were speaking about colours in spanish.  i said them aloud, verde que te quiero verde

"federico garcia lorca", responded mateia.   yes! federico garcia lorca.   verde que te quiero verde - green how i want you green.  mateia told me about the time she studied spanish poetry at ljubljana and wrote her own poem, which began...she recollected slowly in silence, then looked in her notebook and recited:

este no es un poema...

that was the refrain (the only part i remember): this is not a poem.  i said it reminded me of the words of some other author.  oye, conoces el escritor norteamericano henry miller...?  no sooner had i pronouced his name mateia exclaimed i love henry miller, i could read his books again and again.  and have you seen his bathroom monologue on youtube? and do you know pynchon? similar to henry miller, but miller's writing is made to look innocent compared with that of pynchon's.   she was radiant with her enthusiasm for pynchon, and i made a note to look him up sometime

miller's tropic of cancer famously begins:

"This is not a book.  This is libel, slander, defamation of character.  This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word.  No, this a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty . . . "

i did not warm to miller's writing the first time i read it.  his swaggering egocentrism unsettled me, but now i can say that i have grown to love the unashamed  honesty of his self-presentation .   i love his freedom of thought, his exuberance of thought, his ability to weave his words in such a way as to convey his untrammeled exuberance, his love of words and the rich meaningscapes revealed thereby.  but there remains that one thing that checks my love of his writing, one thing that checks what otherwise could be a smooth continuous enjoyable reading experience...

it is the way he only thinks about himself, his towering egocentricity...

 "he does not see the Sacred", added  mateia

it was a good way of describing it.  earlier we had talked about religion and mateia had mentioned mataji's sacred presence in front of the alter when she chanted and moved the incense sticks round in circles.  

her sacred presence.  i liked those words.

"but what does it actually mean to have sacred presence?  what is the difference between having a sacred presence and not having a sacred presence?"

ah - just let the feeling be, responded mateia softly.

i reflected on my tendency to feel things and then immediately try and understand them with the grasping claws of my logical mind.  

what is the cause of our thoughts and the things which we decide to say and write?  ideas traverse our minds, and whence do they come?

the idea traversed my mind that it is so good to travel.  i said it out loud and mateia agreed, and it seemed to me then, as it does now, that it was as profound and true a thing to say as it was simple.  

it is so good to travel.

yes, said mateia, but nothing beats the feeling when i am back in ljubljana in summer cycling around the streets listening to my music   yeeeah

yes, but after a couple of weeks, i always grow restless...

then, a similarly simple and profound and true thought traversed my mind, begot by the pleasure-seeking machinations of the body sensations: it is so good to eat food. 

i set about doing this a little hesitantly, making some popcorn in my pan over the fire.  that was all we had left to eat.  hesitantly because in my mind were the ayurvedic guidelines to healthy eating given to me by Premnidi:  your stomach should never be more than half full.  it is good to eat something in the morning to give you energy for the day ahead, and again at midday when the sun is hottest and so is your internal digestive fire, but you don't need to eat much in the evening maybe just a bowl of soup.  why eat anything after dark when all your body is going to do is sleep?

however, it was my last evening around the fire and i had no desire to sleep.  it wasn't hunger which drove me, it was appetite, the desire to break up time with a little entertainment for the mouth.  i cut up an orange and stirred in the last of the cocoa powder to make a paste.  it was all we had left.

mateia restricted herself to making another pot of boiling spicy ginger and jaggery.

mateia arrived at the farm one day, a little surprised to find herself wanting to stay for "a few days, maybe a few weeks"  she had spotted the temple marked on her map, and on the steep road up from kollur  had decided to leave her bicycle and luggage at the side of the road and continue walking.  at the moment when i met her she was in the process of deciding to go back for her stuff and settle down for a while.  the meandering path she followed across india by bicycle sounded similar to the path i might have envisaged for myself, before that plan was hampered by visa restrictions, and before i became interested in exploring community living, influenced not in a small part by reading Tobias Jones' book Utopian Dreams before i left Scotland.

i spent one day alone at the wwoof house in between sara's departure and mateia's arrival.  sara became impatient with the cultural differences regarding how woman should dress.  she did not want to have to cover her shoulders while eating in the temple, and, especially, when working outside in the sun. 

sara was one who had no time for religion.  she said that she respected religions, as long as (on the condition that) they respected her.  i think she felt that humanity would be better served if all religious beliefs disappeared.  when i listened to her i found no inclination to disagree with her.  religions are narrow minded.  they impose a narrow vision of life with their creeds and rules, their exclusive possession of the truth, which excludes other religious interpretations.  let's make love our only religion, says sara, whenever anybody asks me what is my religion i say "Love"

tattva left too, on what he called a book distribution mission in korea, which i discovered was a substantial source of income for bhaktivedanta.  previously i had asked tattva about this and he had responded enigmatically, "krishna provides"  then with a wide smile and wide eyes "i don't know how he does it but krishna always provides" 

later he explained to me what he referred to as his "book distribution" activities, which involve accosting people on the streets of Seul, and other south-east asian capitals, and asking if they would like to donate some money for their hare krishna community and the education they give to local children.  editions of the bhagavad-gita, or the srimad bhagavatam are then given freely to the donators, both translated and with extensive commentaries by AC Bhaktivdanta Swami Prabuphada, the founder and sustainer of the Krishna Consciousness movement.  half of the money donated goes into the pocket of the collector.

i later told him that i did not feel a calling to distribute the books (/collect the donations).  i was feeling really eager to hit the road again, and not feeling so eager to dedicate any more of my energy to the whole bhaketivedanta scheme.  instead of trying to paint to the very best of my ability, i told myself to be content to simply finish, to a level of semi-decency, the painting i had promised tattva.

finally i left too.  it feels very good to be on the road again.

to paint is to apply a colourful substance onto a surface.

the basic action of being - constructing a vision of the world - is inherent in the action of painting.  a world - an image of the world - is created according to painter's predisposition.

tattva gave me some very liberal outlines:  "paint some images of krishna, but you can surround them with whatever you want - you could include lots of plants and animals, maybe get some lotus flowers in there, and - oh - a white cow as well would be good"

the script at the top are the sanskrit words which begin the srimad bhagavatam:

Om namo bhagavate Vasudevaya

translating as: Om, I give my respectful obeisances to Lord Vasudeva, or Lord Krishna.

the infant krishna is depicted here having broken into the food parlour and is devouring a pot of ghee just before his mother will come and catch him.  acts of  naughtiness by infant deities are celebrated in hinduism.

the mountain depicted is the nearby kodichadri.  

after taking the photo i extended the size of the white clouds, then it got dark and i declared the painting finished.  the next morning i caught buses to hampi.

india is swathed in a vast array of swaddling deities, each one incarnated - made manifest- in myriad multiform effigies, and venerated by countless millions of indians.  i stand alongside them and attempt to embrace their vision and believe, as they do, that i am standing in front of a real deity - not merely the representation of one, but a real living god, pulsating with divine energy.  try as i might, i cannot look beyond the posed circumstantial elaborations of the human mind encapsulated therein.  i try to see the image as simply a symbol representing the pulsating Life Force found (in fact) everywhere.   bafflement.  ma non ci capisco niente.

i must have inherited the way of thinking of the Old Testament prophets who rallied against the worship of idols.  how difficult it is for a modern day child of Abraham to not believe that God is not a single omnipresent entity exterior to the self.

i love the open curiosity of the writer of the song of creation in the rig-veda, open and curious towards the big ideas, but underlined with an honest unabashed uncertainty:

Who can tell us whence and how arose this universe?
The gods are later than its beginning: who knows therefore
whence comes this creation?
Only that god who sees in highest heaven: he only knows
whence comes this universe, and whether it was made
or uncreated.
He only knows, or perhaps he knows not.

(however, i defy anyone to read the bhagavad-gita (mainly i defy myself) and not be filled with an awe-inspired Certainty of the Greatness of the Universal Spirit.)

(but isn't it just like a human, with her intricate inventive dreaming devious mind, to fabricate such elaborate meaning stories?)

(but just consider the incontrovertible enormity of the human heart, pulsating with infinite love and boundless joy!)

aye.

here in hampi the landscape is clothed in countless monumental stone temples, many consisting of simple unworked rectangular granite pillars and many others carved with the myriad shapes of the gods.  their solid monumentality is dwarfed only by the natural monuments of enormous rounded granite rocks piled up hither and thither, bedecking the low rolling hilltops as far as the eye can see.  the bulbous swollen shapes of the rocks speak silently of their strong erosion-resistant longevity, only smoothly eroded around the edges, caressed by time.    they must be heavy (i reason) but they emanate lightness, a soothing sense of strength and calmness.  they radiate such a soft tender light.  they are neither dark nor shiny.  the molecules of the rock slowly accept the light molecules, warmly embracing them before radiating them back out to be beheld by the eyes of the beholder, who cannot but be pleased by their sight and the feeling of peace and stability felt in their presence.    

these rocks remind me a lot of the landscape surrounding the town of tafroute in the morrocan anti-atlas.  there then, as here now, i am overcome by a monumental sense of my own freedom, but a freedom which begets, a la Jean Paul Sartre, the distant disquieting question:  what to do then?

i am free, unhinged... thus what to do?

maybe it is necessary to be hinged, to be attached, connected, to have roots and stability.   necessary, or maybe it just feels good.  

i sit on top of the rocks as the evening glow steals over (this portion of) the world.  the rocks emanate an even softer, warmer, homlier hue.  the sun is moving on to illuminate another part of the planet.  the rocks stay warm to the touch long after the sun has gone.   they never stop irradiating good energy, which is to say, it feels good to sleep in their midst.