Before There Was This Place There Was Another

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One of my earliest memories is of being in the backyard of our place in Denton, Texas. I remember watching my old man digging in the yard with his shirt off and I was running around underfoot. It was a hot, sunny day. I don’t know anything about the world or what my mood was, but there was suddenly a big coiled up snake in the dirt and my dad jerked me up off the ground by my arm maybe? set me on a table or something and then raised up the shovel and brought the blade down through the snake’s body maybe once maybe a few times what I remember was he was mad and I was afraid and thrilled and sad and mad. proud of him for killing the snake and sick that he’d killed it, too. scared of the snake and scared of my father’s anger and mad he was mad at me when I’d done nothing wrong and upset that he was so upset. I think I bragged about him killing the snake to my mom but I don’t know if that’s true. Fact is, I don’t know if it even happened. I just know that I remember it, so for me it’s like it did. Like I remember him in his dark policeman’s uniform walking out to the patrol car parked in the driveway, like he was some old-timey gunslinger in the west. I remember my mom in her bee-hive hairdo and a summer dress, cat-eye glasses, the whole shebang. I don’t remember them ever saying anything to me in those days, although I’m sure they must have. What I remember is watching television in the morning before they woke up, and getting in the crib with my baby brother and probably torturing him, hoping he’d go back to wherever it was he came from. I remember dirt and sunlight and long hours of silence and being left to my own devices but who knows. I thought I was alone then and it got more like that after the divorce. My old man kind of was drawn out of my world and loomed ever larger in it because he wasn’t there. And I turned a blind eye to my mother, blamed her for his absence, set myself against her in all ways.

Now I’m an old man and I’m mistrustful of all of these memories I carry around. I am not one to dwell on the past, for me it holds little interest- but it’s unnerving to realize how little of what I have built up as the bare facts of my life ever happened at all. I have no idea what I know and what I think I remember because it’s been told to me over and over again until I swallowed it. I know I’ve layered over them again and again with new interpretations and embellishments, based upon what soothed me to believe at the time or what I felt aggrieved about. I’m still doing it. I don’t guess I’ll ever quit it altogether.

More and more my past is like flipping through the family photographs of a stranger. There’s folks in there, frozen in time, doing what they were doing once and now can’t ever stop doing, but they bear little resemblance to anyone I’d say I know now.

I don’t know if that’s sad or not.

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Namaste.

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Prelude to India

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Countdown time. Six days until take off.

In other news, the Woman on The Verge has returned from her travels! I am a relieved and happy dishwasher. The kid may be even happier to see her than I am- if that’s possible. I don’t think it is.

My cells are happier when the woman is around. They plump up and relax their borders. My brain wants to snuggle up close to her brain and lie around like two dogs in the sun and dirt. Tails thumping lazily.

Food tastes better, too.

I’m lost for her is what.

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I don’t know what to expect with India. I mean, I guess I expect noise and color and smell and jostling and bumping and craziness. Interspersed with teachings and meditation at various holy sites, and of course, talk amongst the other pilgrims about what we’re thinking and how we’re reacting and what’s next and what what what.

I know most of the people on the trip and I love them already, so that part is good. Comfortable and pleasing. I’ve spent lots of time on retreat with almost all of them and they are without exception good people and serious practitioners. I will have a roommate and him I have yet to meet. So there’s that to look forward to. All I know is that he’s been a practitioner for almost thirty years and he loves to meditate, so I’m pretty sure we’ll get along, and if we don’t, well, we can at least sit together in silent contemplation.

And of course I love Dawa, the teacher that is leading our trip. I’m sure we are in good hands and I love being around him, and he’s a great speaker and wonderful spirit. I feel very blessed to be going with him.

I just want to go with open eyes and an open heart, see everything, experience all of it directly.

Shamar Rinpoche was going to accompany us on the pilgrimage originally, but his death kind of made that impossible, but he will be there in spirit, certainly. I know that Dawa is carrying his spirit and memory with him and this adds a sweetness and complexity to the whole endeavor, as well as a good reminder of impermanence. Our trip ends with a teaching and a private visit with the Karmapa, which is profoundly meaningful for me. I still remember the video he posted after the Sharmapa’s death- it was so moving and it opened my heart to him so much- I wanted at the time very much to see him somehow, and I thought that it would be impossible. Now I will be seeing him in just a few weeks. It means a lot to me.

And that’s what this trip really is for me. It’s not about going to India, not really. It’s more like giving myself to this path- fully and completely. And then witnessing how that commitment profoundly changes my lived experience. I will be in India with my teacher on the spot where the Buddha attained enlightenment- this is, to me, just the most beautiful and powerful manifestation of the limitless transformative power of intention. It seems to me that I’ve managed to jump my life off of one set of tracks and on to another one completely.

I hope that I can meet this trip with wisdom and awareness, and treat everyone I encounter with love and compassion.

Anyway, that’s it from here. Tell your mama I ask how she’s durrin’.

Namaste.

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