GOA-WAY

Who in the hell put Caro Emerald on my computer and why am I JUST NOW finding it?  OMG!  Love!  Shit, I was in a writing mood but putting this on makes me want to shake my ass and kick my legs around like I’ve got fringe on a flapper dress to shwoosh around the air.  Something tells me the Xanax I just took, to allow me to sleep whilst among the mayhem of Christmas/New Years week in Arambol, Goa, India, may kick in and I’d look more like a sloth trying to liquid rave dance in about ten minutes.  Actually, if you want to know how many days I’ve been here so far, all you need to do is look at my xanax supply and count all the torn foil and squished plastic circles to see what it’s taken me to not only promptly get onto India time but to bloody sleep in this place.  In my not so extensive world traveling, there are a number of places that have touched me so deeply that once I’m in a place to actually find some stability, whatever that is, and a suitable partner in loving crime (cuz you know, we homos are breakin the law! breakin the law!, in many of these here worldly parts), I would want nothing more than to take her to these spots.  Arambol is NOT one of these locations!  I don’t think any spot in Goa would be worthy, not that I’ve had time to explore with my 13 hour yoga days, which is not a complaint, just a glorious reality.  I gave up my serious club and partying days years ago and at the roadside vendors you can find all sorts of lovely paraphernalia like pipes and coke/ice bullets.  I vowed to stop drinking the week I got back from Berlin and as hard as it’s been on some days when my equanimity has been severely tested, I’ve death gripped the shit out of the railings of the sober wagon. I view club and party culture the SAME IN EVERY PART OF THE WORLD.  Just because you plop it in India and throw in a pretty beach with lots of saggy crotch pants, doesn’t mean that god awful psytrance you’re listening to whilst sucking white shit up your nose through the bullet is any different than if you were in a warehouse in Seattle.  This place is nothing but the party and the sun-bathing hangover, which is totally great for those who dig traveling this way but it’s not my scene, AT ALL, not anymore.  Since I’m not here to party, travel or explore and I literally just walk across the street from my guest house to the yoga space 878,935 a day, it’s making it ok that I’m here but I’m surrounded by those who have come here to party their asses off or make money off those wanting to party their asses off.  If I was hoping to get any sort of Indian culture from here, I would’ve made it a day or so and then peaced out of this pop stand.  

God, I’m sounding so bitter, and I’m really not; although, I will say that this week I realized, since I left McLeod Ganj, which IS one of those spots I’d take a lady love, my equanimity has been perpetually tested, or maybe I’m just more aware of the fact I have equanimity and that it’s always tested.  In either case my aspiring yogini self has still a loooong way to go in dealing with the ups and downs and now that I’m actually in a better mindset at this moment, I’m thankful for all the tests.  I’m more thankful for the gloriousness of the people and situations I’ve had that are loving and wonderful but even the bull shit experienced since the middle of October I’ve found an ability to appreciate, and I wouldn’t change a thing that’s happened.   The difference between home and now is that I allowed myself to completely lose all focus on what I really want from myself when I was visiting Seattle.  Had I maybe stuck to SOME of my yogic lifestyle, the one god awful challenging experience I had at home may not have taken up so much of my emotional energy, whereas now, I’m back on the path and doing things that are good for me and living the way I want to live, which allows me to be more of a witness to what I’m faced with rather than throwing myself into it emotionally.Well and also at home, I was dealing with someone who I used to be in love with but now whom I, unfortunately, find almost impossible to like.  Right now, with my current challenge, my yoga teacher, I need to constantly remind myself, “take the things you like and leave the things you don’t and just BITE YOUR FUCKING TONGUE.”  5 days - that may have been the quickest and shortest honeymoon phase ever for me.  I really think I need to propose to the Yoga Alliance that they need to hire me as a TTC Consultant to travel the world, observing those schools that are registered with the alliance to ensure their adequacy.  I mean, I’m a total gap analysis nerd with a keen eye for inadequacies, mad skills at making things run more effectively and implementing changes and I loooooove yoga so the marriage of the two, mixed with travel would just be awesome, right?  I’ll see if they bite J 

I’m having a bit of a rough week, which sounds utterly retarded considering I’m in fucking Goa, where the sun is shining, I wake to a crisp, almost cleanish air w/ the sound of the waves smashing into the shore, the sky is so polluted you can look directly at the huge glowing pink sun setting over the Arabian Sea every night and I’m doing yoga, in whichever of its 8 limb forms, 13 hours a day.  I know it sounds completely ridiculous and I should have nothing to complain about, in fact, I try to never complain and always find the positivity but rest assured all, I’m still an unenlightened human! J  I think I’m PMSing, which I’ve found, for 1 week a month, negates any emotional progress I’ve made over the years.  At least I return to a relative “shanti, shanti” resemblance of myself as soon as I start to bleed out like a sacrificial lamb.  I also think the Xanax has kicked in and I’m feeling mushy brained so story time, which I hadn’t even started yet, will have to commence at another moment in time.  Time to drown out the horrible western jazz funk band playing about a 100m away… I’m in India for fucks sake!  Where are the sitars and tablas!?

<II>  ßthat’s a pause button, in case you didn’t catch that. ;)

(<)

I just counted the number of squished plastic circles that used to contain a xanax pill.  Ten.  I’ve only been here 10 days?!  For the record, it was 8 when I started this blog entry.  Jesus Christ it feels like sooo much longer!  As expected, my inability to keep my craziness in check last week was due to the loveliness of womanhood but thanks to the ridiculous quantity of yoga I’m doing daily, sacrificial lamb status hasn’t been reached, THANK GOD!  I wanted to start writing about some of my fun stories since being here like getting the best reflexology massage at 2am by a blind man in the Mumbai Airport, the shanti restaurant waiter throwin blows within hours of me getting to Goa, the corpse on the beach, my sleep deprived purchase upon reaching goa that reminds me of farts, the smoking hot Russian chick who calls everyone “Baby” like she’s a Hollywood agent or my teacher bagging out of teaching the Hatha classes my first 2 days and throwing the task to me with, literally, 2 minutes warning.  The last few days though, something has happened while I was practicing laying meditation during Vijay’s chants in our final relaxation during our evening class. 

I’ve attempted to do laying Vipassana most days to make quality use of the time, besides sleeping, which I tend to do, but yesterday I said “fuck it” and decided to just focus on a chakra the entire time.  Now we all have these main energy ports and most everyone’s Anahata Chakra (located at the spine by your heart) is perpetually blocked or just royally fucked, and I’m no exception.  Each chakra has an associated flower design as well as color and for the VERY FIRST time yesterday, with my eyes closed, I actually saw color!  It morphed from blackness to a weird brightness, which isn’t unusual but all of a sudden, like a shade, a bright greenish turquoise color fell over my focus.  It was so beautiful and weird and as soon as I got excited, it went away, just like when I jump into handstand w/ both feet and find the perfect balance just before raising my legs to their final vertical position.  I ran back to my room after wriggling my toes and fingers back to awareness to text Brittnay and tell her because this shit has always come so easily to her and I finally saw a glimpse of what she’s been able to see.  By the way, India is not the same without that girl and god dammit I miss her.

Today, among all the annoying psytrance, biebs, and live funk folk, silence descended and from somewhere, I heard a live trumpet proudly playing Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon, which id and always will be one of my favorite songs of all time.  My sisters and I had this stuffed purple and green plane with a huge cute smiling face a little wind up music box inside.  We’d wind it and in the most delicate of sounds, it would play a very soft version of Sinatra’s classic and for whatever reason, we all feel like crying when we hear it.  The urge fell upon us as children when Jamie got it when she was born and it happens to this day.  I don’t know if my grandfather, my mom’s dad, gave it to Jamie but for whatever reason, I always think of him when I see that thing.  Maybe it was because he was a fighter pilot in World War II and the Korean War or maybe it was his love of Sinatra but when I hear that song or see that stuffed animal, he is all I can think of.  I got a picture of him in my inbox just the day before Christmas, one that I don’t think my mom had ever seen or at least not seen in a long time.  He passed away when I was 15 years old and was my last living grandparent.  My dad’s dad died just after I was born, his mom, when I was 10 of diabetes/obesity and my mom’s mom of her own self destructive lifestyle when I was… I don’t even know how old I was.  The only grandparent I ever really knew was Papa and he, like my mom, was the glue that held the family together in unity throughout all the madness, changes, challenges and immense difficulty.  He was her rock and to me and my sister’s, he was the greatest.  He’d put on Sinatra and we’d play boca ball in his backyard in Manhattan Beach, California during our summer vacations or he’d come lay with us at the pool at our hotel.  He was a giant compared to my tiny self and I’d get lost in his hugs.  I wish I had more memories of him but I feel like I’ve pushed a lot of the first half of my life out of my head, which I guess can be considered the root of all reasons why I’m where I am today, literally… ½ way across the world trying to figure out my shit.  

My mom gave me an old wooden chest that contained all of my and my sisters’ stuffed animals when I bought my house.  Her parting words with it were, “enjoy and I’ll let you decide which stuffed animals to get rid of.”  Oh god the task!  Those things were our prized joy as children.  I still have my teddy bear and soft rabbit, both that I’d carry with me everywhere when I was wee.  When I actually had my own bed in Seattle, I’d sleep cuddle up with my bear and even if I was dating anyone, whomever it was, would always manage to snag it at some point and snuggle with teddy.  So you can say my sisters and I really dug our stuffed animals and we had TONS!  I opened the chest and there, staring at me, was the smiling plane.  I obviously made that a keeper, along with a few other items, that would share space with my linens.  Every so often, if it wasn’t piled high with all my unopened mail and stack of NSCA magazines, as I walked out of my bathroom, I’d open the chest, pull out the plane and turn the knob and just close my eyes and listen.  It’s a weird happy sad I get every time I hear that song that I really can’t describe except for that, it’s happy sad.  I’m glad I kept it, not that there was ever any question, but Jacqui and Jamie would both occasionally ask if we still had it.  After Jamie delivered our family’s first son/grandson/nephew, I grabbed the plane and gave it to Matthias and Jamie was so happy and when Jacqui finally arrived, we listened to it and like always, we all teared up.  God we’re a bunch of emotional sappy asses!

Why am I saying all this?  Well, that trumpet, somewhere on the dirt and dust filled street below me in Arambol, Goa, was playing this song while I was focusing on my Anahata Chakra, again, during Vijay’s chanting.  At first I saw color again and then I went somewhere, lots of places.  I went to the plane first and the memories I have a Papa and all of a sudden I went through, in the most vivid images ever, of the first meetings of each of my 3 best friends and the one and only woman I have, so far, loved and been in love with unconditionally.  I was back on the Hill with Josh as we and brace face Tamme T and other friends gallivanted around Broadway on a cloudy day.   Sitting in Jenner’s car, I turned around and looked at a baby faced James who wouldn’t stop playing with his god damn labret piercing on the way to the Y2K party in bumfuck Washington.  I was chilling in the sun on Waterfront Park listening to house as pig tail sportin Kuddlebear Shannon was introduced to my jaded junglist self and I was wasted outside the Rose as I saw Danger’s blue eyes and one dimple for the first time, which I proceeded to poke incessantly the duration of the long evening that stretched into morning.  I couldn’t control my mind, I didn’t even try so I was failing miserably at meditation but I was ok with it.  As the trumpet kept tooting and my focus remained on my heart chakra these images just flowed and then I could feel a tear, I’m going to assume a happy one, roll down my cheek and I hadn’t even noticed the emotions and the manifestations of those emerging from my body until I felt the tear.  The chanting ended, my toes and fingers were wriggled and I had to hurry up to shower before our philosophy class so I hadn’t quite come to yet.  The feeling I had wasn’t quite a yoga bliss because with each step I took I felt like Big Foot slothing through the forest, one monster step at a time, but my leg movement felt effortless through the air as I made my way down the stairs, dodged scooters and across the street to my guest house.  The happy/sad feeling had left me feeling light and heavy, all at the same time.  I told Jade of my experience and she squealed (not really squealed, she doesn’t squeal) “oh how wonderful!  A detoxing moment!  Just let the tears flooow!”  “Jade, I’m not sad, it was quite a peaceful and happy feeling of contentment.”

I’m not sure what to make of it but for some time at dinner, as I sat by myself with my toes digging into the sand, the whisper of the ocean waves in the background, my Kindle open and ready to be read, I just stared at the slightest of crescent moons, staring and wondering if this is the same moon the loves in my life will see tomorrow when the sun goes down and moon rises.

On a different note, it’s really hard to concentrate on my breath and body position during Hatha when I want to rip the clothes off the girl next to me, not that there’s much to rip off...

XXXOX,

Dirty