will i be a saint?

4:30am in india.
already i am sweating.
i have not slept in 28 hours.
i have not showered in 2 days.

chennai is a city that reminds me of a stately older woman, big trees line the streets. i feel like a barefoot bride under a leafy canopy walking towards my wedding procession with myself. the horns of the rickshaws are my band. i am a bride drunk on tiredness, travel, time zones, drunk on the secret knowledge of myself. some call this yoga, meditation, prayer, ceremony. it is fun to drink from the spring of myself.
"First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you."
-F Scott Fitzgerald

4:30am in chennai and i woke up and laid in bed, i felt my teacher awake in the house i am staying at. i went downstairs to sit with him. we are both typing on our laptops...ah, modern salvation. i wonder if they used to do this writing on betel leaves?

what makes a saint?
someone who sits in white and asks for nothing for themselves? who has been mysteriously neutered of their yoni or lingam, their sex drive, their genitalia? are saints allowed to have genitalia? or is that an obscene thought? i must not be a saint.

is a saint someone who burns for truth? if that is enough, wouldn't allen ginsberg and all the filthy beats be saints?

"angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-ery of night
...
who bared their brains to heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated
...
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall" -ginsberg, howl

the beats too travelled to India, decades before me. poet-sufferers who dropped the condensed pearls of their ecstatic/painful search for god out their mouths and fingers in profane and gorgeous howling poetry? does the artist wear the mask of ecstatic torment to bleed our dreams for us? it is easy to suckle on their words and make saints or fools out of them.


if i feed hungry children will i be a saint?

if i remain monogomous and make love to one man will i be a saint?

if i sit cross legged wrapped in orange cotton, ass spread on the sidewalk lost in trance, will i be a saint?

if i sacrifice everything i have for what i love will i be a saint?

or will i only be a saint if you feel peace when you are beside me...or if you feel your heart set to burning when you sit beside me...

Sri Sarada Devi
"when i die, bury me standing up because i have spent my whole life on my knees" -gypsy saying

isn't it enough to be a woman, to have born a child, to have walked on my knees begging for grace, mercy, redemption...i am a redemption junkie. my life a pilgrimage of laughter and tears on my knees...following the path of my heart, that trickster song. embracing the profanity of loving my son, many men, a few women...trying to love my parents in a way that doesn't make me mad...trying to accept that the world is full of suffering, yes as the buddhist say, but it is equally true it is full of pleasure as the tantrics say...trying to accept that sorrow is the left hand joy, and that both hands open the heart.

i will grow old and lose beauty
i will grow old and die
in this lifetime i will bear the loss of those i love, through inevitable death, through trials and growth and the endless hand of time wiping the sands of space free again and again. inevitably. mercilessly.
i have a vision for you. i have a prophesy for you.
you too will die, you too will grow old (probably) and you too will feel the longing of love. so make the most of this one uncertain life. try to stay awake. the hindus say that the world is the dream of blue god vishnu, who is floating down the river of time reclining on a chaise lounge being fed grapes by his woman. the universe is the lotus blossoming from his navel. god is dreaming this world. so try to stay awake for the sacred profanity of the mystery.