Not a Single Lament

PREFACE

A twirling electrical sound blasted in my mind. Sun salutations had been completed. Air left my body.

Lost reason. Lost conscience. A myriad of eyes looked at me perplexed. My body dropped. Vertically.

I had an electrollite imbalance and pared from the world for split seconds. Fainting, the first time.

Loosing sign of breathe in altitude. MacLeod Ganj.

Perhaps of all India, all of what has happened over the past decade descended on me. Clearly and brutally.

It is obvious to plummet. Onto my knees first. Then hit the white tile porcelain below. Forward first.

In a strange place, in the distant Himalayas, body finally claiming space, expressing one last need for rest.

That moment, just as much as the gun pointed and then directed to my skull months before led me to this last surrender.

India, this journey, Varanasi: April 3, 2010, Varanasi, India

VARANASI

A whole encounter with existence, life and death, at once. Here. Here too. Here today. My body electrified at the sight of life down current near the Ganga. Sight of life leaving the soul, one "palazo" to the skull, and free it goes. Soul out of body being released. To the distance infinite ahead.

For life, still, it seems like a point forward. Seems like a walk in ever increasing directional options. At last, points that within sober realisation of age acquire much sought after infant wanting and craving. Eternal search for innocence. To be good again. To be new again.

The heat in this city reaches 43 Celsius. Felt it all day. Encountering a short man, with rotten teeth, and a dusty purple scarf around his neck. He led me to the high point near the river, the largest Ghat. To see how bodies incinerate and burn and collapse and explode within the burning heat of the flames below.

Dozens of men, managing dettached and skilfully the fires and ashes that end at last the lives of hundreds of women and men who come to this city, to this river, to this holy place to do nothing other than to die. To give their lives away, to reach Moksha. Complete dettachment from this life, and reach, eternal forgiveness.

Flames burnt at variable levels. Durations. Tempos. Changing. Each pulsated at the rate of light and sound of the body that finished. Flames, hopelessly unique as the life of the body and soul that preceded this burning. To various extents, this moment was unceremonious. Cows and water buffaloes fed themselves in the fields of trash nearby. They also floated in the very waters where human ash soaked. A man relentlessly dipped himself for minutes underwater hoping to recover rings, past gold, past gems, from the river bottom. All bodies die. How simple can I be? Not understanding this.

A youth is feet surfaced near the human ash. Soaked of death water. Impressed I remain. He is relentless. Dips himself further. into the death. He could not find any. And dipped again.

Bamboo sticks at the river bottom. They prior held the ash skeleton. Now they are light as feathers. The scorch is summer hot. Bamboo sticks at the hands of men who grabbed them to accommodate the bodies seem to get stiffer as the body stems limber out and float away.

Not a single lament. Not one tear. Process of life understood fully. Not a single lament could be heard. Ashes and smoke rained above, sparkled above, human past rained on us hundreds.

Death present. And the minute realization and urge: to live! To Live thoroughly!

TO SEEK LIFE.

April 3, 2010, Varanasi, India