Joseph and the rose. I think of
getting out of town.
He
left me on a Tuesday. ‘I’m sorry” he said.
‘’I
understand”
I
look around the room in the villa with all the stuff I bothered to bring with
me, mainly suits, a few dresses, magic rocks, pictures of home.
We
can go in two ways here.
I
think about what it must be like to be
dying and have no choice in the matter. I think about Father Amlaldos and the
peace jungle.
I
don’t bother sending an email. I book flights into Trivandrum and try to remember how I got there last time. It was
almost a decade ago and I arrived in the
town by train at about 4am in the dark, was almost run over by a cow. A lady
was kind to me and I showed her some Indian scribble, she put me on a bus,
looked in my wallet for the money and bought my ticket. When we hurled around a
sharp left at 110 he driver pulled up abruptly and yelled at me to get off, I
think. I was clutching backpack and my evidence and civil procedure text book.
The caretaker greeted me and took me to a room for sleep. I met Father Amaldos
at 10am, just after silent time and he explained how it worked. The Nepalese
monks sang as they peeled vegetables. I
went for a walk and felt the rich earth beneath my feet, felt peace. It was a
place for beginnings, endings and in between.
The
ashram days.
I
fly and go through something similar to that process all those years ago but
something has changed. I am there for different reasons. I don't care about money or the future of what people think. But then, I didn't care a decade ago either. This time I need to make a big decision though. Such is the magic of the Gods that in the peace jungle one does not
think further ahead than the next prayer though. I wander the jungle, abide by temple
and prayer times, lie on the floor at 5am with the fire and ash and chanting,
mediate, watch the leaves on the banana trees blow and the house boy climb
the trees, cut down clusters of fruit. I am no longer the youngest so it is not my job
to pour the milk at meal times. I still serve the curry, silently, I want to be
present. I spend my days in prayer and meditation and mass, my free time in the
magical little octagon of a library.To learn so much and throw it all away would be such a waste no?
I
wait out my days there, it may have been one day, and it may have been 1 year.
No
one knows of cares. I clear out some rooms in my head and think of things,
memories, dreams, reflections but also I see the mangled trajectory of my 34 years from the outside. Does
it end here or does it begin? Why are
these decisions all so dependent on the headspaces of the reckless &
feckless?
Perhaps
when I am there God will tell me the answers and I will have wisdom. Perhaps I
will be as stupid as I am today and give up God's greatest gift, wait in purgatory
for his resolution, repudiation, wrath or forgiveness. I would rather be in the peace jungle than purgatory. So
perhaps I will wait here. I don't ever actually need to leave. But that would be like being that guy who stays at uni forever and never leaves because he can't face the real world. That is not me. You're either in or you are out.
Perhaps I am channelling Saint Augustine – Please god make me pure, but not just yet… ...if you want to ascend, begin
by decent.
Or
perhaps there is all the hope in the world. The gods have been very kind to me
to date, I have a debt to pay and it must be paid on one side or the other.
