the old-school guestbook archives
my amazon wish list... my favorite astrologer... my favorite artist... yerba mate revolution! erowid: a travel guide for interior journeys... no more war: MoveOn.org United for Peace and Justice True Majority seek the truth: Common Dreams Unamerican Activities The Nation people I adore, diaries I read: rev.raikes ariana cubiclegirl epiphany glitter333 laurakay wammo the music: the asylum street spankers backyard tire fire blue highway bill camplin wendy colonna freedom tribe joules graves guy forsyth band hamsa lila hanuman libby kirkpatrick leftover salmon pamela means medeski martin & wood the motet the nice outfit nickel creek open road rose polenzani railroad earth south austin jug band string cheese incident taarka tha musemeant the devil makes three tim o'brien band trolley wild sage keller williams yonder mountain string band |
the possibilities of life ~ June 14, 2002 - 10:16 p.m. I just had a fabulous yoga class. I feel wonderful. today was just a gorgeous day. I had a meeting this morning to discuss my work schedule for the next stretch of time here, and it just keeps getting better. they're going to let me drop housekeeping altogether in favor of website development. and when the plumbing project I'm working on (digging ditches and laying water lines) is done, those hours will revert to garden hours. I just love my new schedule. then I had a fabulous afternoon working in the garden, soaking up the sunshine while I composted one of the beds. some big clumps of rosemary were being cleared, so I saved some bunches of it and hung them in my room, so now my room smells amazing. I'm reconnecting with the joyful space I used to live in before my long, strange winter. I find myself at times walking around just smiling into space because I am just so happy. I am just having the best life. and today I also got this amazing e-mail from james. telling me that he believes the motorcycle accident was karmic backlash for the way he mistreated me. and how much he's growing through this experience. he's opening, changing, finding sensitivity and the ability to cry. I am just so glad. and I've been realizing, too, that this experience has been healing for me as well. has dispelled the last of the negativity I was bearing towards him for the struggles of our past. I've been able to stay centered in compassionate space and wishes for his well-being. everything happens for a reason. and I should tell you about amma. amma is love incarnate. an incredible, divine being. if you go to her website and look at her picture, you can feel it radiating from her, but there's no understanding it until you experience her in person. she's on tour, and on wednesday I rode my bike up to see her in san ramon, about two hours away. I had a weird feeling that something might go wrong with my bike, but it's been running fabulously and is much more reliable than the bus. and anyway, I wanted to ride. so I rode up there to see her, and it was incredible. there is much ceremony and ritual surrounding amma, and in all of it you can feel the tremendous love her devotees have for her. as she entered the temple, she stepped onto beautiful cloths they'd laid out and bedecked with flowers, and a group of longtime devotees washed her feet in the ritual manner and laid flower garlands around her neck. then she walked down the aisle where I was standing, and held up her hands on either side to touch those of her devotees. as her fingertips brushed mine in passing, I felt a definite charge. then the program began, first with a talk by one of her followers, a woman who told stories about amma's divinity with much good humor and laughter. I couldn't stop looking at amma, where she sat at the head of the temple. I could actually see a golden aura around her-- circular, like a halo. after the talk, amma announced that she would take questions-- which apparently is very unusual for her, and caused a stir in the audience. which, by the way, was something like two thousand people. maybe more. so she responded to a few questions, speaking through a translator, since she speaks an indian dialect. her answer to one of the questions spoke directly to something I've been thinking about a lot lately, but I think I'll tell you about that another time. then began the kirtan. kirtan is the singing of devotional songs in sanskrit, which amma led, and it's deeply joyful and full of energy. I feel vibrations pulsing through me during kirtan, and sometimes I am utterly transported, as I was during the last song. people were dancing, clapping, swaying, and ecstatic joy rose up in my chest. the indian woman next to me was sweet enough to lend me her songbook so that I could follow the sanskrit and sing along. it's call and response, but it's hard for me to catch all the sounds unless I have a visual. after kirtan there was some ritual guru devotion, the making of light offerings and a short meditation. and then it was time for darshan, what everyone there was waiting for. when amma gives darshan, she hugs each and every person there (thousands, remember), whispers mantra into each person's ear, then gives them a hershey's kiss which has been blessed. darshan can go well into the night, but since it was my first time seeing amma, I was allowed to be in the first part of the darshan line, less than a hundred people in. I've heard it was a powerful experience, but I didn't really know what to expect. as I got closer, I felt a little nervous. there were guidelines posted towards the front, asking people to tissue off any excess makeup and perspiration, not to kneel on amma's toes, etc. at the front of the line, things got pretty intense. it felt like a charged version of waiting to sit on santa's lap. devotees played elf at the front, getting everyone into position for their hug so that it went as quickly and smoothly as possible. I was maneuvered into position as the man in front of me finished, and then amma reached for me and I sank into her chest, which smelled of fresh rose petals and the scent just enveloped me as she held me in her arms. and then she brought her lips to my ear and chanted mantra, three syllables each repeated rapidly in a string, mantra she'd chosen for me, and as she chanted something deep inside me vibrated, somewhere in the vicinity of my womb and spreading through my whole body. it was like no sensation I've ever felt before. then a hershey's kiss was pressed into my hand and I was released. and I was-- indescribably, unbelievably spun. dizzy, lightheaded, my knees buckling under me and tears rising in my throat and welling at my eyes. I understood finally why the girl a few people ahead of me in line had begun to weep after her hug. I reached for my water bottle and program, which were being held for me, but I couldn't speak to tell the woman who had them I needed them. someone else touched her for me and she handed them back. and then I reeled away, wandering around for a few minutes in a daze. I really had not expected amma's darshan to affect me as powerfully as it had. I wandered through the store at one side of the temple (all proceeds go to amma's charities), touching beautiful indian fabrics and blinking back tears. I bought a packet of gold bindis and slowly came back to myself. I left the temple and went to the tent called "refuge", where food was being served. suddenly I was ravenous, and I paid six dollars for a fabulous indian meal and deeply enjoyed every bite. I ran into beautiful people from santa cruz, one after another, and by the end of my meal I couldn't stop smiling. it was midnight by this time, and I had a two hour ride ahead of me, so I smiled my way back into the night and found my bike. I was so spacy I almost forgot my gloves, realizing it as soon as I felt the breeze on my knuckles. and then, just as I was about to pull out, my headlights went out. see, there's dual headlights on my bike which have been jury-rigged some strange way, so that they turn on at a switch by my right thigh. I flipped the switch a couple of times, and the loose feel of it told me it was broken. I started to panic, but then I reminded myself to calm down and reached behind the switch to jiggle the wires. which worked. the headlights came back on, and I found an angle for the wires where it stayed on. then I began the long ride home. this is where the story gets strange. about forty-five minutes into it, the bike started doing something weird. grabbing, kinda. it felt like the engine was cutting out, like I was running out of gas. I switched to the reserve and hit the next exit, which happily had a gas station. I filled up the tank, but it only took about three and a half gallons out of five, so I hadn't been running too empty. that's when I started to worry. but then I also realized I'd accidentally left the choke partway open all that time, so I figured maybe it was just running too rich. I closed the choke and headed back out on the highway. about ten minutes later, it started again. I pulled off at a quiet exit near a closed county park, and got off to give it another visual check to see if anything was obviously wrong. when I shut it off, the headlights stayed on. this is bad news, since bike batteries are tiny and die quickly. I jiggled the wires some more and got them to turn off. nothing was obviously wrong. I decided to let the bike sit for a while and cool down, in case it was an overheating problem. I was starting to get deeply nervous by this point, since I've got nothing like AAA for the bike, and there's nothing like public trans to where I live. breaking down on the bike would mean a long and dangerous hitchhike home in the middle of the night, and then having to figure out how to retrieve it somehow later. but the engine was idling fine, and it seemed to be okay at low speeds, so I decided to get back on the highway and keep my speed down and see what happened. jiggled the wires to get the lights back on and set out again. I said a prayer as I hit the highway, and sang amazing grace a few times as I rode, the sound of it bouncing around inside my helmet. then, on the highway somewhere on the outskirts of san jose, my headlights went out. I pulled onto the shoulder, which luckily was wide, and messed with the wires. they flickered on a couple of times but wouldn't stay, and then they went out and stayed out. no amount of fiddling would help. it was about 2 a.m. by this time. and yes, it freaked me out a little, but you know-- what are you going to do? I sat on the guardrail and stared at my bike and thought it all out. I tried it a few more times, getting down on my knees and configuring those wires any way that seemed possible. I found one configuration that got the switch to light up, but no luck with the headlights. they just would not go. so then it was time to make a plan. the good news was that the bike was still running, so really the main problem was not being able to see/be seen. so really all I could do was wait for the sun to come up. I decided to find a place where I could crash out for a little while, since I was exhausted at this point and there really wasn't much else I could do. I got off the freeway, walked up an exit ramp, and found myself on a quiet road. one of those outskirts of san jose where the high-tech officeparks have mostly taken over, but there's still tiny pockets. a small farm right next to the freeway. an overgrown park. a little house, with an honest-to-god television antenna on the roof, sandwiched between two gleaming office buildings. empty lots with real estate signs advertising proposed luxury homes. it was dead and deserted that time of night, not a soul in evidence except for the occasional glimpse of a graveyard shift security guard looking bored in an empty lobby. the first spot I found to curl up and take a nap seemed ideal, under a tree with branches that came all the way to the ground on a corner of the last remaining famer's lot. but once I got there, something felt creepy about it. rough cement had been dumped in a patch about the size of a grave under that tree, with a couple of small sinkholes nearby, and I started to wonder if I was lying on someone's body. I told you that death has been lingering around the edges of my consciousness lately. the tree was mostly dead, too, and it didn't seem like a good omen. so I decided to move on. I walked for a bit, past the the overgrown park, which felt so creepy that I didn't even consider it for crash space. I thought I might curl up in some carefully manicured bushes in one of the officeparks, but the first one I came to was posted with all these heavy duty "no tresspassing-- violators will be prosecuted to the fullest" signs, and it just wasn't welcoming. I came to the end of the officeparks, and there was just rolling hillsides and trees, with those big luxury homes signs. in the end, I curled up on a hillside in the shadow of a real estate sign. not deeply concealed, but the place was deserted, and besides, no one really looks at anything in san jose. and anyway, as long as I listen to my instincts, I know that I'll be fine. if a place feels okay, then it's okay. I curled up and crashed out, exhausted. I slept for an hour or two, and woke up with early morning birds singing, but stars still in the sky. I sighed, wondering how far away dawn was, and then a shooting star streaked across the sky and I smiled. made a wish having to do with well-running machines carrying me safely home. checked my clock and it was 4:30, so I got up and started walking back to the highway. got back to my bike and sat on the guardrail as the sky lightened around me. finally it was light enough, and with a little prayer I climbed on my bike and headed home. it ran. it ran and ran. it was foggy and cold and I was chilled to the bone, but my bike carried me safely home. with enough time even for me to crawl into my own bed for a couple hours of sleep before I started my day. an adventure, surely. but you know, when you're a no-credit-card-and-not-much-money-girl, you're just gonna wind up by the side of the road once in a while. through it all, I knew that it was going to be okay. and I had all that amma energy to carry me through the night. I slept in the shadow of that real estate sign with her program next to my heart and her hershey's kiss in my pocket. I knew that I was safe, I knew that I was loved. and I knew that, one way or another, my faith and belief in the possibilities of life would carry me safely home.
(((rings))) |