bugger melanoma

I was sitting in the desert in Arizona, feeling particularily holy when, in the midst of counting breaths, I noticed that there was a strange dark place on the back of one hand. I knew, instinctively and immediately, that it was melanoma. For years I had ridden horses outdoors with no sunscreen on the back of my hands. For years I had fished in swamps, rivers and the ocean without sunscreen on my face or arms or backs of hands. My mother died of cancer. Panicked I planned my funeral, wrote my will, debated on going to a doctor. Then I looked closely. It was a bugger.
Monkey mind.

hanuman

I have a tattoo of Hanuman on my arm

Tattoos are funny things. Where does the motivation for tattoos come from?
The first one was, for me, a moment of celebration.
The first tattoo symbolized the beginning of a search, reaching the age of 40, a new relationship with my body, and the pure joy of being by myself in a tiny alleyway in the middle of Bangkok. The tattoo "artist" talked on the cell phone the whole time. It took all of twenty minutes to do.The tattoo was etched on the back of my left wrist, right where a watch face covered it up.



5 years passed before the next tattoo. 3 8 hour sessions with an artist. The whole upper left arm was done of Hanuman biting the pearls that Ram had given.
The motivation was cement. There was no honor involved in the first tattoo. This one honored the commitment to the search. This tattoo cemented the relationship.


Will there be a third tattoo? Who knows? Who is searching?
The thought of Kali appears periodically. The  goddess of time and change. My kudzu.

Laughing Matters

Along this path there have been moments that evoked chuckles, guffaws, chortles, belly laughs and even giggles.
Driving cross country I would periodically go into the 'getting holy" phase. And end up laughing at myself.
Like the time I stripped naked and walked into the desert to sit and meditate. It took only minutes before the ants, whose house I had destroyed with my thoughtlessness, urgently bit my ass. My naked ass.
There was the time when I sat on the edge of a canyon. My legs painfully twisted into the appropriate form for meditation, and my mind kept wandering. I kept trying to write postcards home to friends, tried to describe seeing an eagle below me, trying to describe the powerful sound of the Colorado and the Red River meeting a thousand of feet below me. It sounded like ... like... (I was reaching for the perfect description) ... Highway 26. I laughed out loud at the attachment we have to "good sounds" (like the rushing rivers) versus the "bad sounds" of a busy interstate highway ... even though they sounded the same.

Then there were the nights in India when I lay out next to the Ganges, in Rishikesh, giving my body to the mosquitoes. It took me a year later before I laughed.
The laughter continues.

Not So Holy

The dengue fever really wiped me out.
Two days after the fever broke I decided that I needed to lay in the sun. Very slowly I climbed the steps up to the roof parapet. Shaking from the effort I lay on the concrete wall. I fell asleep. I rolled over and woke suddenly as I fell off my perch. And thought I was falling 20' to the concrete courtyard. I yelped "Oh shit!" as I fell 18" to the ground. How holy was that? I laughed and laughed. Gandhi said "Ram Ram" as he was shot. There was the difference between holy and my fake holy. It took weeks before I was able to function normally. But that close to death, and the focus on death, and the pain experienced all changed my life. I was prepped for death from here on, so all I had to do was to live.

• "Everything you need is provided."


• "Everything you are looking for you will find."


• "Everything you are looking for is divine."

The place I was living was provided, what I was looking for I was finding, and this looking place was a holy spot with an altar and all.

Getting Sick

I mentioned in the last blog that I got sick. I got dengue fever. Also called bone-break fever.
Ha. What a joke. I spent twenty years traveling throughout Central and South America looking for spots that had dengue fever. I figured wherever there was dengue fever there was remoteness. I never expected it in Varanasi, India. How remote could a city of 7 million be?
Both were trips searching based. Both were highly successful in their own way.
During the 8 weeks preceding the dengue episode I meditated on my own death. And I mean sitting for four-six hours/day. Focused on death of the body, awareness of the moment of death, fear of death, awkwardness of detritus after death. I sweated bullets in the stifling heat of Assi Ghat. I was determined to personally confront this stuff. Then I almost died.
How providential that I had done all of the prep work.
The meditating for such extended times helped in more than emotional/psychological ways. I am a fat American woman of 50 years old. Sitting in the lotus position was excruciating (and for some reason I had to meditate "authentically" and twist my legs in a figure 8 on my lap with my spine as straight as a stack of coins). I had to deal with this pain on a daily basis. Dengue fever feels as though each bone in your body has been broken. Your finger bones, your collarbone, your toe bones, your leg bones, your face bones. Every bone broken. Your eyeballs hurt. And a wicked fever.
How providential that I had done all of the prep work.
As I lay in the bed, prepping for my death, I laughed about the 20 year hunt for dengue in the jungles of South America. I laughed at the prep work happening at the perfect time. I laughed because i was going to die aware.
There was blood coming out of my ear on day 4.
I got seriously focused at this point.
Then, after 7 days, the fever broke, and I was still alive.
I decided that I had attained holy. That feeling only lasted for two days.

What am I doing here?

       I started taking lessons in Hindi, but had a feeling that that was not all I was here for. I was searching for something. I had no positive feelings about religion, yet I was in the middle of the holiest places on earth. One day a young boy handed me a brochure of a man teaching yoga. Not hatha yoga, but other kinds. So for six months I sat with him several hours every day, took Hindi lessons, and meditated. It wasn't doing the trick. But I felt that I was on the right path.
       Back during the trio trip we had gone to Kenchi to see a holy woman. Before we left on the trio trip to India I asked Jenny what I should talk to with this woman if we met her. Jenny said to pretend that she was god and ask her anything you want to. Well, at that time I was still stuck on the hiking-New-Zealand idea, and the only question that I could think of to ask god was "Where is the most beautiful place in the whole world?" Now really. How lame is that? So we got an audience with god, and I went to ask the question, and I knew. I didn't open my mouth. I knew everything. For a brief second I felt that I was flooded with an indescribable amount of space. Damn if I can describe it. There was nothing to ask.
So, during this time of Hindi lessons, Yoga lessons and meditation I knew that there was something else out there.

I eventually got tired of the yoga teacher, meditated until I got sick, and kept up with the Hindi lessons, smoked many a chillum with itinerant babas, boated the Ganges, bathed in the Ganges, did 108 Hanuman Chalisas, had chai every morning as the sun rose on the steps of the ghat. Then I went to Nepal to chill out before heading back to the states. Then back to India. Back to Varanasi. What was I doing? What was I doing here?

Surrender

I forgot to mention that before I took off on the solo India trip I had decided to surrender. I was already surrendering to this voice in my head

• "Everything you need is provided."


• "Everything you are looking for you will find."


• "Everything you are looking for is divine."

There was something about this trip that made me want to surrender to the experience. I sweated bullets on the flight over. All of my fears were surfacing. What if .... What if .... What if .... The flight was a blur until the hotel room in Bangkok when I saw Asheville on the screen. I awoke to experiencing the sequence of events. Kinda. Sometimes.
      The taxi ride to the hotel was a perfect overwhelming shock. But deep inside I was thrilled and sure that I was in the right place at the right time. The hotel was facing the Ganges. My room had a balcony facing the river. There was a grimy restaurant in the reception area with dog eared paperbacks. Everyone spoke English. I was shaking from excitement that first day. Now. What was I doing here? I spent several days in the room, on the balcony, trying to figure this absolute insane passion I suddenly had for Varanasi. What was I doing here? Why this very spot?
I went out on the fourth day just walking around the neighborhood. I saw buffalo walking in the street. I saw an elephant walking in the street. I heard bells, and shouts and cries. I smelled feces and urine and curry and spices. All of this at once. So many people. It was a blur. I turned a corner and bumped into a man. It wasn't until years later that I knew how rare this was. This was the only time, of all my time in India, that I ever had physical contact with another person.
       Anyway. We bumped. He looked at me, cocked his head "Oh, are you here for Hindi lessons?" Here it was. My desire was not to have Hindi lessons. I felt my face blanch and my heart sink as I croaked out "Yes." I was surrendering. I was starting the trip.