Onomonopoetry

So I was sifting through my old bedroom, and besides realizing that I have way too much shit, I found some interesting tidbits from my former selve(s). Perhaps most intriguing was a stack of old notebooks. In one of them, I discovered a large volume of scribblings that I apparently penned while I was in Istanbul, although I have no recollection of writing them.

Memory is a funny thing. It's been two years since I fell in love with the Bosphorus (the channel of water that divides the European and Asian halves of Istanbul). Is it still a part of me? Do gray waves and elusive metaphors still inform my current existence, even though I can't remember writing the poem that I copied below? What about the last six months of my life?

All these stark divisions between "here" and "there" have made it profoundly clear how fleeting things are, and the changing times have tickled my nostalgia-switch and my bewilderment-button.

Ah existence, you shifty little devil... you sure are interesting.

"Bosphorus"
listen:
     whispering cosonants
     blue voices rushing in between
ensōs cleave foghorns
and
--hush--
in the wake of these three syllables
a twitter of wings

Holidays and Home-time

Yesterday I turned 22. This means that I am now divisible by eleven, but otherwise is not terribly noteworthy. Unless you count the fact that I am now completely and undeniably a "young adult." (Eep.)

To celebrate my friends and I climbed Spencer's Butte. We drove through the morning mist and hiked up through the frozen old-growth, marveling at frosted spiderwebs and the foggy grand glint of the trees. On top of the butte the universe gave me many birthday presents. We were above the cloud layer (i.e. inside of heaven) and beheld an oceanic expanse of undulating fog pierced by the crowns of the cascades. I learned that mystical shadows are not unique to Sri Pada--my humble home-town hillock also cast a mysterious triangle across the sky. A rainbow sundog did yogic backflips at the tip of the penumbra pyramid, and, although my feet stayed rooted to the summit, I fell into the sky.

Sometimes I wonder why people prostrate to inert things like statues.

And today is Christmas. Despite my bitter old-age, there is still some magic in this day. The magic smells like candles, tastes like spiced cider, and sounds like my dad strumming his guitar while the rest of my family screams happily during a heated game of Apples to Apples.

Thus I return to my native land, after spending almost all of my time since June in Asia. It has been strange: I've had some bewildered moments before the fireplace during let-lagged insomnia where I pass the time by striking a match, watching it burn down to my fingertips, and then striking another match. I miss my friends from Bodh Gaya, I recall the sacred frenzy of India, and I struggle to remember exactly what it felt like to breathe the thin air of Tibet. Like somehow a perfect memory will make my experiences meaningful.

But it's also not strange: I laugh easily with family and old friends, exchange knowing moments with Douglas firs, and thank the rain for making things real. Even after six months of deprivation, it seems perfectly rational for there to be toilet paper in bathrooms, and I remember how to brew coffee. It's almost scary how easily I can slip into a place where buzzwords like "insurance," "football," and "career," are circulated so often.

I am not in a place to draw conclusions tonight. Hopefully further reflections will be forthcoming, along with pictures. Until then, I hope that anyone who reads these words can see the spectacular beauty of everything.

The Last Days in Bodh Gaya

During our last sitting at the Bodhi tree I sat in zazen. When you sit in zazen you are supposed to be like a pine tree in the wind or a frog on a lilly pad, but instead I was like a girl sitting on a cushion beneath a sacred tree feeling the pangs of impermanence. I broke my still contemplation to wipe the tears on my face with my scarf, and struggled to remind myself that Buddha's don't cry. After we sat, our strange little sangha lit hundreds of candles and laughed like there wasn't a universe collapsing.

When I came back from Sri Lanka, I had one week in Bodh Gaya to share tales of the independent study and bid India farewell. During those dust-filled days I had many long meals in Tibetan restaurants, hastened to finish my paper, and spent as much time as I could reveling in the presence of the people on the program--people who I have come to love. It's funny, but one profound thing I learned in India is that, at least for me, places are people. When I look back on the semester I spent in South Asia, I will of course remember the vivid beauty of that landscape, but those images are inextricably intertwined with the people with whom I absorbed them.

The man who leads the Buddhist Studies Program in Bodh Gaya is named Robert. He is spectacularly wise, and we would often speculate that he is the embodiment of Time. As the end of the program approached, we would refer to our farewell to India and the dispersion of a beloved community as "Robert's last lesson": everything is impermanent, everything is changing, and there is nothing to cling to. The universe collapses in every instant, and every tangible imagining is just that--a dream.

So now it is over. It was beautiful, and, because Nirvana eludes me, the undeniable preterite of the word "was" conjures a pang of sadness in my chest. However, this ending (like all endings) butts heads with a new beginning, and I am excited for the West and Christmas and school and the unbounded mystery of Things That Have Not Yet Come to Pass.

I will end with something I wrote during my last days in the monastery:

I sit on the veranda overlooking the garden
the gloaming plays blues saxophone and
the people in the village strike matches to
light candles in their windows.

Brown-skinned workers pour their last
load of cement into wooden frames and
quiet laughter echoes in the stairwell.

I smell the sweet exhalations of the earth
as it rolls over sleepily and
wonder about impermanence.

As the sun plunges the
clouds strike a beautiful, sad note
and I pack my bag.

Farewell to Sri Lanka

Farewells and transition states are always a little bit sad. They're also a little bit beautiful... Oh I don't know. Yesterday Gabe and I abandoned the our papers to make sand sculptures of a gate, the Taj Mahal, a pyramid, a stupa, a swordfish with a ladder, and 1/2 of an ant. Then we alien bombed them with globs of sand and ran into the warm waters of the Indian ocean.

Tomorrow we fly.

Sri Lanka by Numbers

Weeks On Island: 3.5
Umbrellas Purchased: 2
Pieces of Toast Consumed: 4.3X10^11
Random Forays with Monks in Mini-vans: ~4
Leeches Contracted: 3
Elephant Sightings: 1
Dinosaur Sightings: 5
Nighttime Readings of the Book of Genesis: 1
Recovering Drug Addicts Befriended: 82
Literal Gate-keepers Encountered: 7
Train Rides Through Tea Plantations: 3
Stairs Climbed: >5,000
Creepy Assassin Handshakes From Old Men: 2
Hours Spent Meditating: 12
Famous Architectural Monuments Re-created in Sand: 3
Official Conversations About Love: 21
Pages Written: 17
Moments of Bewilderment: Upwards of Infinity?
New Tropical Fruits Discovered: 2.5

Ode to a Hermit Crab

A maritime wanderer
scuttles across
the scope of the sand
bearing the
hollow, glittering mosaic
of home.
Vanishing tracks
etch scriptures on solitude
as the wearer
of bleak armor
schleps its
mobile, noble asylum
inch
by
inch.
I stop to marvel but
it walks on
the brave, lost nautilus
cast out at sea.

Rain
Rain
Rain
.
.
.

Thunder boomed a minute ago so deeply it echoed in my diaphragm. I sit here in the guest house and, even though this keyboard has three alphabets, I'm struggling to enact a fingertip tap-dance that spells something insightful about love. I tried to load "gmail.com" as a distraction but for some reason the "om" part got entered as a search parameter and instead of my e-mail I received "about 99,000,000" hits about just one sacred syllable that means everything is everything else. Meanwhile the peacocks (confirmed as incandescent blue) mew plaintively in the rainstorm and I wonder how the hell I am ever going to write a paper in Sri Lanka when I'm doubting The Academy backwards and forwards and would rather sing of eternal vibrations than correctly utilize Chicago Style Notation.

Yes. The rain is falling and it's just past sunset. I should be writing a paper, dinner isn't ready yet, and I'm wondering.

"Finals" in Ceylon

I can see the ocean from this computer. Its absurdly blue tropical water is about 20 meters away from my keyboard. And I have to write a 20 page paper during the next few days. One page for every meter that separates me from the ocean.

After a Bud Ride of Doom (read: immense lostness in the pouring rain, sore sore legs cramped into packed buses, and an unforeseen night in Colombo), I find myself in Mirissa, a sleepy beach-town on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. Smooth white sand gives way to the rumbling infinite sea and palm trees lean over the beach, lazily reflecting sunlight. At nighttime fireflies have raging dance parties with the stars and frog song blends with the mewing lullabies of peacocks.

So I am writing a paper in Paradise. I have to click "New Blank Document" and start typing out coherent and academic thoughts about the ideals and lived realities of love in Sri Lanka. I suppose I will do this, given that I came to this country to create this project. All I really want to do, however, is prostrate to the ocean.

Sri Pada

Wake up time: 1:47 a.m. Darkness, but the had monsoon subsided, so that was good. Many, many stairs lay before us--more than 5,000, we were told. The concrete staircase was lit by fluorescent lights that went up and up until you couldn't tell if they were stair-lights or stars. Umbrellas in hand, we heaved and sweated our way upward, only stopping once at one of the many tea shops along the path. The moon looked on, one day past full, at once like a kind eye and a gemstone.

At the top of the sacred mountain there was a temple and a bell and a convenient array of public toilets. We got there around 4:30, with the constellations still visible and strange red lightning flashing on the horizon. After wishing on the bell, which was for wishes, we huddled in a blanket and looked for meteors. The wishes of others tolled across the forever-space of the hill country, our breath came as steam, and we waited for the sun.

When it came, it came spectacularly, bearing fake-looking rays and illuminating the cloud cathedrals that hovered over the jungle. Sri Pada is known for the shadow it projects at sunrise, and we marveled at the perfect triangle that lay to the West of the sacred mountain, a casually mystical tribute to Three. Then, after the trance was broken, we made our way downdowndown on legs of jello and consumed a deliciously expansive breakfast.

I'm not quite sure what it is about climbing mountains. There's something deeply human about the ascent, something alive and breathing that doesn't care about metaphors. I know very little about truth and I sure as hell don't know my mantra, but walking upward, putting one foot in front of the other, moving, threatening the sky... that's something that I could get behind.