malaria of love

what is this
sometimes,
something,
longing
that pulls me further and further towards the rythmic shores of no where?

sometimes,
somewhere,
i hear my heart calling
like a parched earth cracking open, making room to be filled with
rain

my heart hides the secret
(like shocking pink mouth of the fig)
she is always thirsty

there aren't enough people to satisfy her thirst
for this thunder love
shaking my inner landscape, making trembling,
unlacing my most inside heart

my eyes are always searching
the further horizon
for this
somewhere,
something,
as if they know what
i have long ago forgotten
that in this lifetime i will never be satisfied

i journey on in my shape shifting boat of dreams

glimpses of stupefying beauty fill the horizon
and i rest in each one as if it were an eternity
like the pink sunset sweetly revealing herself for a few moments
as the softly folds of a woman's skin
before swallowing herself into the night
the honey calls to follow the mystery

i do not know what makes my heart so tender and love come on like an exotic sickness
like a malaria of love

still, everywhere i go, i think of you

love, it splits me in two

i talked to my teenage son this morning, the phone line crackling and our voices blurry on my cheap indian cell phone. secretly and not so secretly, in my heart of hearts, i hope i do not hurt him by choosing this life of travel, of finding my own way.

i have never understood how to be a good mother. this boy was born from a deep longing to have someone of my own to love and to be loved back, the unconditional love of a mother and a child. at 17 i got pregnant willfully to know that love.

and now he stands 17 and i 35, and there are no guarantees. from the beginning this longing and love split me in two, even as he came gasping out of my body. from the beginning when the seed began to grow and my belly ripened like a mango...what i wanted and how it came to me always split me in two. there is no control of the ripening belly and locomotive of birth. i was so young, what could i understand except the most basic desires of the body and the heart?

i am proud of my son. not because he has done what i have asked, or made the choices i would have chosen for him, but i understand now what god meant when he looked at jesus suffering and said, "this is my son whom i love". i would carry a photo with me and show it to everyone in the whole world and say, "this is my son whom i love". whether i am deserving or not, this is my love. it splits me in two. it splits me in two.

goodbye at the train station

we said good bye at the train station. we are supposed to meet in 24 hours in another city. a train and a plane will take me there, first west and north to delhi, then east and south to vizag. i bought my tickets ahead of time. he has no tickets. he is going to wait at the station to look for trains, to try to meet there one way or another. but this is his country. he says, "don't worry, i'll come out", and makes a motion of being born.

he helps me load my bags on the train. we do not hug because that is not the custom for men and women in india. always it seems eyes are watching. i am aware as a white woman of not wanting to bring more attention to myself. i think my purple bra strap has slipped and is showing, and that is shocking enough. so we wave goodbye in the doorway of the train, exchanging secret smiles with our eyes.

i sit down and begin to let my mind wander. then i feel a tap on the window behind me. i turn, there is his hand pressed to the window. i press mine back and then he is gone. i see his tall head bobbing above the crowd until it disappears. "there is no space, they all choke each other", he had said when we were fighting our way to the train through the mass of bodies, thick as a bloodstream. maybe i will see him in 24 hours.
inshallah

inshallah means, god's will be done, but it can't really be translated into english. it implies a whole culture and faith. deeply engrained patterns of time as old as the deserts. it also means, i surrender to what is meant to be. to destiny. to chance. i surrender to fate. to the will of god, to the will of nature, to the will of all living things that fill the earth. i surrender to the influences of the elements, the weather. i surrender to the influence of the heavenly bodies, the way the moon pulls the mighty ocean. i surrender to the invisible interconnection of all things and the fate we share together.
inshallah

i bought my ticket last minute and i don't know where my sleeping berth is. i am so tired my eyes are burning. i find an empty berth and lay down to wait for the ticket man to come help me. i fall asleep immediately. i am woken up by a woman saying it is her berth. i am sleepy and disoriented. i wander to another train carriage. the train sways beneath my feet. i can see black velvet night and the moving earth between the gap of the train carriages. i find another empty berth and hope i won't be woken up again tonight.

i open my eyes and feel the train gently rocking my body. side to side. i check my cell phone for the time, 6:30am. travel is disorienting. it makes me aware of how little i control. i must allow myself to slip into the stream, to give my body to the swiftly moving current. like swimming, it is easier if i relax and give my weight to the water. then i am supported and carried on.

the naked flourescent bulb is next to my head, it illuminates the train with an unromantic eye. the sellers begin walking through the aisles, singing songs of what they have to sell.
"chai, chai, coffee, coffee"
omelette, bread, omlette, bread"
the travellers before me are murmuring in hindi. the woman is not saying words at all, just a sing-song, "ha, ha" to let the man's voice know she is listening. she sounds like a bird, maybe a parrot. when i do not speak the language around me, i am reminded that words are just auditory symbols we have agreed to have a common meaning for, to communicate. underneath all the language of words is another language of emotion, tone and vibration.

Guruji's answer about my fear

last night i wrote an email to my guruji when i learned a western women had been murdered in the same village i am teaching yoga at just 2 months ago:

dear guruji,

i am not usually afraid, but it is scary to think about possible backlash for women's empowerment. i wanted to do abishekam with these women too.

love,

psalm

i recieved an answer from him this morning:

My dear Psalm,

You write so well !

When you go to a village to work with locals, it is wise to go with someone who has worked with them, and who won the confidence of the people whom you are trying to help. The social concepts of right and wrong are very strong in villages; your fears are genuine. Even if some one does puja at home, people think they want to harm others, and brand them wicked.

Actually the word wicked comes from the wiccans, who used to have meetings, where they "wicked", that is, practiced. They never meant harm; the motto of wiccans is do what you will, as long as it hurts none. We have moved far from the days of burning witches on the stake. But the mob mentality still persists.

Skills of social anthropology (observing without judgement or trying to change) help in rural development. You are much safer in slums in urban areas I think. Because they accept change easier and faster.

How can "we" decide in how much time '"they" should change?" Change comes from awareness, interest, desire and action. It takes time. We can sow the seeds and water the roots. You can't speed up the growth by pulling on the plant.

Probably, you do your thing; let people observe and join if they wish to. Go slow; villages are vey sleepy places, steeped in age old beliefs and not easy to change. You are much better off in areas where some social imrovement groups are actually working successfully.

You are not alone. We have to be together. Then only an impact can be made.

" Fools tread where angels fear to go"

Love, guruji

stalking myself

feb 24, 1pm

sarnath, india

i woke up this morning and looked in the mirror. there are new lines in my face. i am in india living my dream. is this the point of it all? i age, my body decays and yet i feel more comfortable in my skin. i feel a bit weary. it feels grounding.

india strips away my layers of comfort and coping like layers of an onion. i spend my life stalking myself, india is an excellent place to stalk myself. the travel, trains, the filth, the constant confrontation of the highs and lows deconstruct my identity and leave me raw. bruised and mosquito bitten. tenderized like a piece of meat. i am the hunter and the prey.

i asked my teacher this trip, "why am i attracted to Kali, the black goddess?". he said because i am not afraid of the dark things, the emotions. i bring them to the front for healing. three years ago when i asked him the same question, he said, "kali is power. you are attracted to what you don't have". i was puzzled by his answer then. perhaps now his different answer reflects some change in myself. this trip he told me that i have moved from being a bliss junkie to a healing junkie. he told me that have healed myself. that is hard for me to grock because i am always thinking about how i can change. but maybe i am more healed than i think i am. or maybe healing is different than i think it is. maybe my endless quest to live in the perfection of a spotless mind is the very thing that blocks me from feeling healed.

my teachers answers are often contradictory, spontaneous and puzzling. they change according to the person asking or the time of the asking. days when i feel low, he says things that lift me up. days i feel full of myself, he says things that knock me down from the pedastal i have placed myself on. he says the gurus job is to break the disciple's ego. so the disciple is not happy when they are with their teacher, but they are also not happy when they are away from their teacher. a catch 22, but isn't all of life about making peace with living contradiction? the opposites of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow.

my neck was locked with pain this morning when i woke up. i feel how the poverty in this village triggers my own pain. i said i came here to teach these women, to try to change the world, but i am really here to change myself. to see the ways i hide from myself. my coping mechanisms that isolate me from life and other people. it is my own pain that has brought me here to try to empower others.

i am riding in a rickshaw on the way to teach in the village. i am sitting beside my friend rohan. i rest my head on his shoulder and hold his hand, his dark fingers interlaced with my lighter ones. i begin to cry. not a pretty crying. the muscles of my face ache from the crying. it is a release. this is releasing what is locked in my neck.

yes, i am here because my own pain drives me to try to create the kind of world i want to live in, the kind of world i can feel safe in. i look inside. but then i get lost in my own self. my own pain is as seductive as a sirens song, it is easy to drown in the deep waters of it's dark, thick sweetness.

the rickshaw pulls up outside the school. i get out to teach. i feel as weak as water, my joints feel fluid not strong. i want to hide in the rickshaw and go back to my hotel and hide in bed. i don't know how i will find the energy to teach right now. i take a deep breath. i walk toward the school. i decide to look at what is around me instead of drowning in myself. i see their faces, i relax. i don't have to be perfect, i just have to be here. the first few days i put up a wall to cope, then i dropped the wall and felt my own pain deeply. this is the first time i feel relaxed and present, able to actually see and here the women around me.

the class goes well, i am laughing as i teach. yoga really works.

sustaining the gaze

february 24, 11am

sarnath village, india

i woke up this morning with my neck paralysed. it was locked in place and when i tried to move off the pillow it felt like a knifing pain. ah, here it is. it always goes back to this, where do i hold my pain? here it is showing itself to me in my body. no matter how much i have meditated, done yoga, prayed, whirled, chanted and gone to sweat lodges, i still have pain. my body does not lie.

yesterday in the village and the day before i had so much tension. anka made me watch myself from the camer's naked eye. it was difficult to watch myself on film. walking around, looking glamorous and out of place in the village. avoiding conversation and contact even that's what i came here for. i see how i create a wall as a coping mechanism for myself. it is so hard to look into the face of poverty, to look into these big brown eyes all around me. so hard. life is not fair. i have much more than these women and children. i have more opportunity. the fact that i can choose to sit here with them is a choice. i have the money, the means. the women in that room cannot choose to go to America and do service work. it is not fair. yet it is the bare truth. i want to be able to take away their pain and poverty, but i cannot. i must accept my own role. i am also aware that i am projecting how much i think they are suffering, i don't know their lives that well yet.

what am i able to do? what am i not able to do? i see my own choices. i choose to be here halfway around the world telling these women about empowerment. why? because in them i see myself. in their struggle i see my own struggles. i did not grow up in india. but i did have a baby when i was 18 and struggled against seemingly insurmountable social judgements and material difficulties. i know what it is to look at my child and feel naseious with the fear of not knowing where i will get him food, or where we will sleep tonight. and yet somehow that changed for me. i feel i live a life with choices now whereas before i felt like a choiceless victim. i cannot explain exactly how that change happened for me, but it had to do with yoga. something deep inside me changed how i saw myself, god, the world. and then my circumstances began to change too. so i offer yoga back to the world, to these women. i struggle less with life not being fair. i am able to stand in the yard where the school is and look into the faces. here there is no social taboo against staring. stares are long and lingering and intimate. it is as if in the gaze i travel through their eyes to the center of their soul, and they stare back, travelling through my eyes to the center of my soul. we exchange energy. i see suffering and i sustain the gaze as best i can. but still i woke up with paralysing pain in my neck this morning. i am still keeping up a wall to cope with my own pain that is being triggered now. in the past i used to retreat into debilitating depressions, now i am able to withstand more without running away.

i don't have all the answers. i am not a perfect yoga guru who has figured it all out. the pain in my body is from tension i am holding now, today. my body keeps me honest. my body makes me face my pain and where i am holding it. what is at the root of all this desire to change the world? why am i here? i am driven by pain. they say pain is a great teacher. without pain we would be satisfied and not strive to grow and change and sacrifice. and yet, is what is driving me onwards the same thing i am running away from? loss and grief. how much of my life have i spent in grief? for the lost dream of my childhood. for the parents i wish i had. i am here speaking to women in india and yet i have not spoken to my own mother in 10 years. she was a very angry person. she was abused as child. her pain made her abusive to me physically and verbally. i used to think i was doing all this spiritual practice so that i could be some kind of saint. so that if i got the chance to talk to my mother again i would be loving no matter what she said. that even if she said i was a terrible daughter who ruined her life, i would be able to smile and not feel hurt. and not feel emotionally affected at all.

now i think all my spiritual work will just help me to sustain the gaze. to accept what i cannot change. to love even through pain. to not judge myself for being human. these might not be the right enlightened answers, but they feel true to me now. in that acceptance, i feel my world open up. i feel very real and alive, awake and present.

A western woman was murdered in the village

i just found out that a western woman was murdered two months ago in the rural village where i am teaching. my friend rohan, who is indian, has travelled with me in india many times before. we have been to many dark and questionable places and he was never worried for me before. today he was very concerned about my safety.

i am shaken by the news of this murder. much more shaken than i was about the terrorist bombing that killed westerners at the german bakery in pune a week ago. somehow, that felt more removed and random from what i am doing. but another western woman being killed in this same small village i am going to, and only two months ago feels very close to home for me. i wonder about this woman. who was she? where was she from? what was she doing in this remote village?

in the village there is a beauty, an sweetness in the women i am working with. it is wonderful to see how they are becoming warmer with me and each other after the yoga. that's why i teach yoga, because it works. but as i walk through the dusty street in the village, i see a lot of pain and sadness in the eyes. i am told there is a big problem with alchoholism with men there. isn't that always true in ghettos? i have been told that it would be dangerous to be in the village during holi, a holiday coming up in a few days. i am told the men drink alot on that day, and it would not be safe for me to be outside. i shudder to think about how things can turn on a dime.

as a foreigner, i only see the poverty. i do not know if one area is more dangerous than another. it is like a very dangerous area in america, where there are gangs and homicides as well as the underlying poverty. i have been told that this is a slum area, i am not sure what that means.

i was warned that the men might not respond well to what i am teaching the women, their wives and daughters. in class today, i asked the woman what their dreams were. we went around in a circle sharing. one of the young woman whose toddlers wander in and out of the classes said she couldn't think of anything. the other women encouraged and cajoled her to try to think of something. she said she wanted to be a good daughter in law. i told her that was for someone else, what did she want for herself. she said that she had wanted to be a teacher, but her parents made her get married instead. i told her that if she starts sharing the yoga, then she will be a teacher. because a teacher is someone who shares knowledge they think is important. during the class, her mother in law came and watched by sitting in the open doorway. afterwards, they were standing in the yard and i told her what the younger woman said about wanting to be a good daughter in law, and that she could do that by teaching her mother in law yoga. i felt very good about the exchange. but now i wonder if that woman went home and told her family that i asked her to want something for herself besides being a good daughter in law, it might not be that well received. there could even be a backlash.

i am afraid. i live a life where i stalk myself, i stalk my fears. i am only so fearless because i am afraid of everything. the suffering and cruelty of the world have always made me afraid of this place, where man can be so inhuman to man.

the first time i left my teacher after meeting him and being initiated, he said, "take care, the world can be cruel". and it can.

the last time i saw him we talked about what makes people to things like genocide. what about leaders like hitler? what makes a group mind harmonize and lead to divine levels of love and compassion versus a group mind sinking to demonic levels of violence and retribution?

hopefully, it is the practices i am trying to share that helps make that difference. the world is sometimes very scary. we do not treat ourselves and each other well.

when will we stop making martyrs in this world? not until we stop loving being martyrs ourselves. i do not want to be a martyr in this lifetime. i have had visions of being burned as a witch in a village before. today, when i was most afraid, my mind flashed a picture of being dragged out of the classroom and beaten in the square. i do not think this is likely, but i saw the fear in my own mind. what is a witch? a woman who owns her power. in taking responsibility for your own power you confront fear. the fear of not being accepted and loved. and the very real fear of being punished, sometimes brutally.

in the end, i do help create the world with my own thoughts, so my negative fears are more likely to magnetize negative experiences. but i am not the only one creating this world with my thoughts, we are creating this world together.

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things that I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.