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Babylon Ruins Reopen in Iraq, to Controversy

Kolkata

Prophets at the chai stand,
on the benches, in the alley
by Paragon Hotel.
Former crackheads, so often the case
But off it these days, now
just smoke a little grass
And let loose to who will listen.

Eddie reads hands, told a man
He would be dead by next winter
Lo and behold

But the initiate shits on the Bible
And he is scared, a God-fearing
Man, won’t do witchcraft
Won’t even read hands
And so it is my own thumb
That traces my lifeline
And wonders.

You need anything, he says
You come to me
A Carmelite convent, he says
Somewhere not too far
In the morning you can write
ask for prayers
And they will take your prayers
And bless you. Come tomorrow,
Nine-thirty to twelve thirty, He says,
Perhaps, Perhaps, I say,
If the Lord wills it, I say,
and shake his hand
Before going back to the hotel.

And before,
Pilgrimaging north
To Belur Math – the Ramakrishna Center
foot, ferry, bus
and the heat of the brazen season
the city a mash-up of saffron and shit
and people
strange, brown men and motherly women
passing
as a multitude,
as waves in a swaying sea.

After the museum, and walking the grounds,
ride the ferry up the Ganga
And take pictures of the people
Bathing, swimming out
to meet the boat,
Ecstatic, whether they make it or not.
The sun is sinking
And I take pictures
passing under two bridges
with el sol set between,
The patriarch of the Indian family on board
Gesturing: shoot here, shoot here!
And dismissing it once it’s been taken.
No good that one, he says, shaking his head,
When I show him the ship in the sun.
The mother’s little boy, Akmidad
Eager and shaking my hand
Perfect English, and smart,
Earnest eyes, ‘a very nice name,’
He tells me, and ‘oh California,’
He says, as everyone does.
‘Very nice to have met you,’
He says, and I shake his hand and smile
at his mother.

Monkeys in the courtyard
Eating the carrots the people give them
The young Indian girls
In astonished glee, hands
Over mouths, bodies tensed back
Before venturing forth
To deliver the offering.
Monkey see, plain into my eyes,
Staring and eating a carrot.
Elated, I take more pictures.

And into the temple, Kali,
Barefoot from the entrance
And alone among the devotees
Moving from alter to song
Circle, the men playing drums and little
Finger cymbals, singing along,
And along and along, yearning each other
Toward an ever-receding goal.
Just sing, they say, and the devotees gather around.

After, down to the Ganges,
to dip my feet,
Even though
I have seen a dead rat
From the boat.
It was bloated and floating,
back arched, feet stiffened and dangling
toward the sea.
Not to be outdone,
Stand with the water lapping
And the saris around, and splash
Some drops
forearms
face
Into the strands of my hair.
Then point blank with the fingers
From the forehead to the sun
‘Money, money,’ someone is saying
A little boy’s voice
But I do not want to hear him
Just want to stay with the sun
The water
On my feet, my face. The boy
Passes
And I begin to wonder
How I will get home.

Anxious

Alone all day in Bangkok, stress for hours about right decisions, wrong decisions. Was it right to go back to Bangkok? Was it wrong to follow Joey from Pai? Should I be right now in Laos? Or perhaps go back to Ko Pyangan?

What tumult!

And after a while – also, being quite inconclusive about a hotel room, and then getting angry when the security guard at Chabad questioned whether or not I was Jewish (“You know, it’s fine, but you know this is exactly what’s wrong with the Jewish people today?” I said) – realize I am alone, and that being alone is what I’ve known I’ve needed. And so I start to calm down.

And running into a familiar face on the street – a girl from a train – find myself saying that I do not know what I want to do but sometimes it is good to follow through on the things you said you would do. And also that being in Bangkok I am realizing that Southeast Asia is mostly over, that the beaches are gone, and that India is what lies ahead. “And India,” I say, “They say India is even more difficult than here, and even being in Bangkok I can feel my nerves start to fray, so maybe I should get over it and embrace the challenge.”

And repeating it now, the words of Isaiah come back: “and he shall know everlasting peace”; and the words from Julie’s divining cards – “Choose Peace.” And I sit down at Khao San Central, in the midst of the backpacker hub, and try – demand! – to watch the travelers filing by in all their splendor, their unpackaged package, in their shorts and sunglasses and smoking cigarettes, carrying bottled water and reveling in the newness this foreign continent lends them, the way the sun makes them feel younger, more rugged and alive.

Yes, this too, I say. This too.

This too, this too.

Kundalini Coil

time is karma
and karma is a line
that you use in a play
when you’re off killing time

no such thing in the Divine
the cult of the One
where you’re already forgiven
from the moment you’ve begun

Koh Pyangan, We Love You

crackheads go on being crackheads
yogis go home to your families
hermit stay on that mountaintop
just as long as you need

Peace be between man and woman
peace be between man and man
peace be between three-eyed freakshows
and princesses with frogs in their hand

the Tree of Life has Spoken
the Tree is now Speaking
listen to its roots sink down
its branches sway in the breeze

Three Days in Northern Thailand

In the morning on Sunday, my fifth in Chiang Mai, I meet Alyne and the French couple Fred and Sophie for breakfast. We want to go to the Blue Diamond, with its bakery and fresh avocadoes, but it is closed, so instead we go to Fred and Sophie’s guesthouse, Same Same, which has notes from all the travelers who have passed through written on the walls (“John and Andy drank 99 Tiger beers while staying here”), and I order an omelette with tomatoes and mushrooms and onions, laid over fresh baguette. When we are done, I say goodbye, saying it has been so nice getting to know them all, doing the Thai cooking course at the organic farm which is how we met in the first place, and jamming with Fred on his guitar, me with my mandolin, out by Tha Pae Gate, and I walk back to the guesthouse to pack my things. There, I say goodbye to the nice landlady, who was really so nice, even lending me a bike when I left my key at the Internet cafe, and I strap on my things and catch a taxi to the bus station.

At the bus station, book a seat on the local bus for Pai, a small hippy town four hours to the north, and sit for an hour reading Herman Hesse’s Journey to the East, which I picked up for 130 THB even though I already have too many books, justifying the purchase to myself by the fact that it is so small (!), and it’s Hesse (!), and it’s called Journey to the East (!). When it is time, I load my things onto the bus, meeting in the process a young Thai guy named Ilyus from Krabi in the south. He is full of exuberance and on a three day break from University, and we talk for a bit in broken English, me telling him about being on Koh Pyangan for two weeks and him expressing his dismay that I didn’t make it to Krabi, where apparently the sea kayaking is very good.

The bus itself is a small red schoolbus-type with an opening where there should have been a door, and we all pile in, me jammed against a window with a young Thai soldier squeezing against me on my left. And off we go, winding slowly – painstakingly slowly – up and around the mountain bends, the bus almost stalling out on the inclines and making frightening noises while braking on the way down. I finish the Hesse and mull it over, then read some of the Torah, all those Israeli kings warring against Aram and Edom and Judah, and doing things that are most displeasing to the Lord, worshipping Baal and what-not, and throwing their babies into the fire, and then I meditate, going deep into the mind and listening to its subtleties, the bus rocking this way and that, and me checking every chance I remember to make sure I am not asleep.

Four hours later we are in Pai, and me and Ilyus go ambling down the road, him so excited to see the little river running through town (“Oh!” he says, eyes bulging, “I just want to go swimming!”), which is where I leave him, wishing him a good night in Pai and best of luck with his studies, and him wishing the same for my travels. From there, I walk back up the road and rent a motorbike from a place that will give me insurance and let me store my things. In the shop, I meet an Israeli named Michael who grew up in California, and while I pick out a bike, rejecting the first because there is poor tread on the front tire, we joke about Jews and how Israelis are everywhere – “Just start a rave and the Israelis are there” – and when the whole matter is settled and I have rearranged my things, putting the tent and some toilet paper and clothes for a couple days into my small pack, he joins me while I eat at a Thai place down the street. He is traveling for three months, having finished army in 2006 and already traveled for nine months in South America before working for a year in New Mexico, and he is just at the outset, having been in Thailand for a week and a half. We talk abut Jews and keeping kosher, and the difference between East Coast and West Coast Jews in America. He tells me about traveling with three religious girls, not full-blown but close enough, who eat nothing but salad with nothing on it and who changed their travel plans so as not to cook on Shabbat, heading back to the Chabad house in Chiang Mai instead of continuing on with him to Laos, which he is leaving for in the evening. He says, as if to assure himself, that “yes, traveling on your own is good.” When I finish, he walks me back to the motorbike rental, and we wish each other safe travels, and I get on my bike and leave.

By now it is getting dark – the sun has tucked behind the mountain – and as I am riding it gets really dark, me ambling along the windy mountain raod with bugs smashing into my shirt and face. It gets cold and at an overlook I stop to put on my jacket, asking a Rasta-type Thai guy with his farang girlfriend for directions, which they don’t know. “Drive slow, friend,” he says, and yes, yes, I say, and thank him, and wish them both a good night.

On I go, the solitude of the road set in and me feeling quite out there and on my own, the day passing through my head and the bugs not so bad now and the Now managing every now and then to peek through in all its splendor. I heed the guy’s advice and the cautionary words of my mother, imagined in my head, and take everything nice and slow until I make it to Soppong.

In Soppong, also calld Pang Ma Pha, I stop for the night at a tiny little place with only two rooms, Baan Lek Guesthouse, where a British Columbian named Ken and his Thai girlfriend Busaba greet me and cook me dinner and show me my room on the second floor, reached by a sort of bamboo wooden ladder. A Chech couple is staying in the other room, and while they play cards I sit with Ken and eat, talking about this and that in a great conversation that stretches on into the night. He has been dating Busaba for three years and owns land both here and back in Pai, and tells me about a wat 20 km up the road where I can do meditation, and some waterfalls in the area that I can see, and offers to let me pitch a tent the next night on his land. Coincidentally, fantastically, we have been to all the same places: to Oaxaca and Zipolite and Monte Alban in Mexico, me telling him about buying acid from a Mexican in Zipolite named Jesus, him laughing and asking if I saw God, me saying, “well… well…” “It is still so good there,” I tell him, “Quiet and untouched.” Also, Lago Atitlan in Guatemala, where he spent six months and canoed around the lake, and of course Berkeley, and Burning Man which his daughter has been to and which he is now considering, and tree planting in British Columbia, which I haven’t done but of which Alyne, also a British Columbian, had been telling me and piquing my interest, him only fanning the flames telling me I can make $300/day. He smokes a Burmese cigar and tells me about his daughter, who is doing a yoga teacher’s training in Koh Pyangan at a school run by an old friend, small world, and I tell him of Alli’s and my hopes of doing the same this summer in India. After a while of this, and after I finish my food – Pad Krapow, delicious – he says, “Well, I am getting sleepy,” and shows me the lightswitches to turn off when I am done. “We can settle up in the morning,” he tells me, and “Cool,” I say. “Goodnight,” I say, and “Goodnight,” he says, and he goes to bed, and soon after, I do too.

–

Wake up in the morning and eat pancakes with Ken, plus coffee that Ken and Busaba have dried and roasted themselves. After breakfast, he takes me out to his land, a sloping acre or so coming up from the road where they are planting vegetables. We chat about this and that and then say our goodbyes, Ken reitterating that I am welcome to stay for the night if I like, and we go our separate ways.

From there, I head up the road to Tham Lod caves, waiting around at the entrance like a little kid, looking for spelunking mates to split the costs of the entrance and guide fees, but no one picks me up. Eventually I just go and do it on my own. Nice caves. Afterwards, backtrack to the one guesthouse in the area, Cave Lodge, where a Thai woman gives me pointers and directions and I go swimming in the stream out in the back, exultant. Take the back roads then and wind my way looking for Mae Lana, a hill-tribe village with hardly a tourist in sight, having to stop every few minutes or so to ask directions from anyone I see, and not getting much help. Stop to gawk at the mountains and the valleys and the red dirt of the road. Wow! I say. Wow! Eat lunch in Mae Lana, a beautiful town, after asking directions from some workers in a truck who are very nice, but again, not helpful. I take their picture. Mae Lana is in a valley, with mountains all around, with a stream running through, and cows in the middle of the road. I gesture for this and that at the dusty roadside lunch stop, asking for noodles and getting rice instead and eating it happily.

Leave town and bike to the Forest Monastery, Wat Tom Wua, and ask if I can spend the night. I can. Grab two buns and some rice cakes in the village because the monastery does not eat at night. There is a waterfall, Susa Waterfall, 8.5 km beyond the village on a dirt road, and I set off in search of it before deciding a minute or two in that it is getting dark and instead the excursion will have to wait until the morning. Come back to my pitched tent and partake in evening chanting and meditation with the monks and Westerners staying there, focusing on the breathing, on my posture, on “nothing special,” on the Now. Peter is the one who showed me the Abbot, and Sowya (?), his Taiwanese girlfriend, and Kevin, who has been here two years, is the one who shows me a proper place to pitch my tent. Before the meditation, I sit at the carp pond and wonder if I will come back after returning the bike to Pai.

–

Wake up late, thinking that it is early. Meditate in my tent as prescribed until the bell and go down to the main hall thinking it is breakfast, only to find that it is the morning meditation and I will have to wait until lunch to eat. The abbot shows me the procedure for walking meditation, which is followed by standing meditation, then sitting meditation. Afterwards, do more walking meditation across the big field behind the carp pond, the meadow filling with visions of the past, the little bhikku Jew Jack Cohen from my mystical Judaism class at Penn, among others, and me deciding that Susa Waterfall, with its winding and dangerous dirt road, will have to fall by the wayside. Come back for lunch and sit while the abbot makes jokes I cannot understand (the accent). He thinks my name is James, and thus 007, a la Bond, saying Peter is 0, and Ian is 0, and I am 7. Eat. The Westerners talk about ants carrying dragonflies and giving their compassion to mosquitoes while they bite them, and when we are done I make my goodbyes and take down my tent. Drive back to Pai, stopping in Soppong to leave Ken a thank you note and to wash my face in the river and to buy a flashlight, and try to be mindful while driving 60 km per hour along the road.

Back in Pai, find a guesthouse that will let me pitch my tent by the river and use their shower for 50 baht, meeting along the way a lesbian from San Francisco named Danielle who is interested in undertaking a similar trek (“Yeah man, I just saw you rock up on your bike with your bag, and I was like, ‘yeah.’”). Make plans to get drinks later. Stash my stuff and set out on one last jaunt in search of Pam Bok Waterfall – I really want to see a waterfall – down the road toward Chiang Mai.

On the road there, meet two lost Russian Israelis, Staz and Michael, in search of the same place, so the three of us go speedingoff, only to promptly get lost, turned around and asking directions from every hill village Thai we meet. Every one of them says something different, 3 km this way, 2 km that, and at one point the Israelis continue on while I turn back. Head half a km down the road before deciding, well, if I’ve come this far, I may as well see the thing through to its proper conclusion, so off I go, along dirt roads that are steep and rutted and almost throw me from my bike. A while into it, TLC starts running through my head, “don’t go chasing waterfalls,” and wonder what I have gotten myself into. By this point it is getting dark. Finally I stop at a bridge that looks vaguely like the description the woman in the motorbike shop gave me, big rocks with three plateaus where theoretically there should be water, but it is dry. My camera is dying but I squeeze out one more picture: the elusive Thai waterfall. Laugh to myself and head back, again over the dangerous roads, just trying to stay on my bike, until I am back on pavement again and home free. All I want to do is return my bike, and back I go, until suddenly, there it is (!), “Pam Bok Waterfalls,” right on the side of the road, who knows how we missed it, with two motorbikes parked in front. Hike up the steps are there are Staz and Michael, having a snack, no fucking shit, and I sit with them laughing, talking about how Michael will go into the army when he goes home in three weeks, and I share with them my rice cakes from the day before, and look at the waterfall, which is actually not bad, it’s a nice waterfall, the elusive Thai waterfall, and I shake my head, the whole episode done, and the three of us get on our bikes and drive back into town.

i’m sorry i haven’t been blogging

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29239218/?gt1=43001

 

how can you say if you never have learned?
how can you learn if you never stop talking?
how can you live in exile when home is where you are?
brother look around you we outnumber the stars.

can’t be bothered

http://fullmoonparty-thailand.com/

hanging with yogis, dancing in sand, reading about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes

The accounts by Josephus and Philo show that the Essenes (Philo: Essaioi) led a strictly celibate and communal life — often compared by scholars to later Christian monastic living — although Josephus speaks also of another “rank of Essenes” that did get married. According to Josephus, they had customs and observances such as collective ownership, elected a leader to attend to the interests of them all whose orders they obeyed, were forbidden from swearing oaths and sacrificing animals, controlled their temper and served as channels of peace, carried weapons only as protection against robbers, had no slaves but served each other and, as a result of communal ownership, did not engage in trading.