Philosophy & Ruminations On Two Years Abroad!

June 7, 2013: Happy birthday, Zach! And many more, plus the bestest of blessings for you and Langka and the gaggle of beautiful souls that are the Treadwell Domberger family....

This, your 38th b-day, marks two years to the day since i set sail on a jet plane out of Denver, Colorado, leaving behind the continental United States and becoming westward bound for Eastern points abroad.... My first stop in Maui, Hawai'i does sort of seem like a long time ago now, although ingeneral, these travels seem to have flashed by in the span of a few days for me.... IT certainly does not feel for me like two years have elapsed! And yet, here i am, in India for the second time, exploring possibilities for teaching and income that seemed never to be open for me back in the states; and having been through a short four months in China, a long eleven months in Thailand, and going on eight months total in India on two separate occasions (with some short visa stopovers in Malaysia, Cambodia, and Singapore), i guess there has been a lot of water under the bridge these last couple of years! From arriving in India in late 2011, all through Bodhgaya, the holiest Buddhist spot on Earth, and the Dalai Lama's Kalachakra ceremony; exchanging a silent greeting with the Karmapa; the Vipassana retreat that ALMOST didn't happen; the Unconference in the woods; Bombay at Gopal's place in Andheri; Kalimpong and Darjeeling; Delhi for a week; Bangkok and Koh Phangan in Thailand; Singapore and life-decision-direction-making; and now, solo-shifting to the basement of the Little Wonders Playschool here in Delhi.... i have tried my best to focus past my intense distractions, and keep my attention centered on the present moment at all given times over these past couple of years; and IT has been deucedly difficult to do so! i have attempted, and not entirely succeeded, to create my own focus rather than blindly taking on the focus which has been pushed onto me by outside forces; and i continue working on this today, even as i write these lines....

And now that i now find myself alone in Delhi, single for the first time in years and with adequate space to explore my OWN internal experience.... Well.... i don't really know what to do with IT! Hahaha....

i am bumbling along, paying attention to my surroundings and the signals of the universe, figuring out positive and progressive actions on a day-to-day basis; i stretch a little bit in the mornings (when i remember!), and try every day to build either contacts or clients here in Delhi town for either educational or musical endeavors.... i am writing a happy, poppy song which will hopefully feature some Hindi hip-hop lyrics from excellent writer and friend Arpita Bohra, which i hope to record in a local studio with some of the really good musicians i've been meeting here, and maybe try to release IT as a single here in Delhi somehow.... We shall see!

And so here i sit in my basement office, penning these lines on my doddering G2 phone with my archnemesis, the Autocorrect, battling me at every turn, as my new blue laptop computer sits unusable with no OS and no possibility of one without an ethernet cable, of which one i have no idea how to find....

Ruminating and reflecting on the past two years is the theme of my day today (as well as being thankful for my friend Zach who i have not seen since 2005!), and while i am not sure what lies ahead in the clouds of the future, my effort remains focused here on the present moment, where i need more fresh vegetables to eat, more sleep, more music practice, and more grateful meditation towards the universe and the ever-sustaining Tao which binds the galaxy together! These things are clear to me, and so i will continue towards them with an open heart and a hope that we all shall come together with each other in this lifetime....

On the horizon is the expanding of my Taro operations - into a website detailing the Taro Of Longevity system, a video series on Intro to Taro, and the establishment of my remote reading services onto the worldwide web, for starters....

*****

Slice of India: 12ish-year-old boy, picking through garbage piles, with a white bluetooth on his ear

*Strange in every shape*

Bizarre and somewhat telling dream, in which i'm supposed to play a benefit show for an old couple, and there's press for IT and all, and one of my bandmates is like a 20 year old kid, and we're all going on an old bus like IT's a school trip to do an interview for the press, and i have all my guitars with me but i don't have my multiFX pedal; and the kid bandmate (who looks like Parvati's boyfriend Peter!) says to me "Well, you better not forget IT for the show," in a pretty snide and condescending manner; and i get pissed and take him by the scruff of the neck and i say, "Let's take a little walk for a minute...." and i proceed to tell him all about how i've been doing this for 15 years, and he's a total noob and can't be telling me what to do, that he's got no call criticizing me about anything, etc. etc.... And as we walk, the bus transforms into a school hallway, and the Peter-like kid gets smaller and smaller until he's about four or five years old, and i'm still walking him along by the scruff of the neck, chastising him as my bandmate! Eventually when i've said my piece, i walk him back to his classroom, and put him back in with all the other five-year-olds, where i then sit down and all the little kids are suddenly older and are my classmates back at the Day School, and we're all sitting around reminiscing about the good old days back in school.... :-/

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Creative design and artistry are some of the main avenues and forces in my life which i have used to perceive my self as an agent, rather than a victim.... By intentionally designing my material goods, their color schemes, their qualities; by crafting my own tones, their feel and lyrics; by managing and maintaining my general atmosphere and surrounding friends through choices which reflect my psyche and my desires, i have created the illusion of my control over the world.... But not only control! No, moreover, a beautiful creation of artistic splendor, reflecting myself back to myself at every turn, like a madman dancing with himself in a hall of mirrors, dancing the melodrama of his life and captivated by each passing snatch of his own face as IT whirls by in a thousand ambient directions....

This is not control, and i am not a victim; yet these truths have been but recently recognized, and the perception of myself as a victim of the world's cruelties and the resulting artistic habit is many, many years deep at this point for me - not to mention colorful and fun! IT seems to be a well-appreciated part of my persona in the world - perhaps the chief part! - and yet masks a frustrated and paranoid urge to flee into the darkness, away from the whips and scorns of a sneering and insensitive populace, down into some Phantom-of-the-Opera type of macabre artistic martyrdom.... And yet with such seemingly positive aspects to share with the world ingeneral, IT would seem that i have got the whole thing quite backwards, and am obsessively holding to an experience of "victimhood" which no longer applies to my current millieu.... With the encouragement i have from all corners in pursuit of artistry and sharing in these ways, IT seems only natural to follow the good vibrations, and to feel somewhat loathe to make any alterations in a good thing! And here once again the question lies, starting me in the face: How am i to make change, when the very change that needs to be made leads away from some of the "best parts" of my self....? Hmmm....

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Wow, this is one of the longest train delays i've ever experienced! IT's taken an hour-and-a-half to go five stops on the yellow line, and at this point i HAVE to get off art Central Secretariat and hustle back down to Little Wonders, instead of meeting Shruti, the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time graphic designer, to give her dough for a MusiQwest logo that i'm not even going to use because Tiffany made me a better one....

On driving in India:
Imagine that there was no such thing as a traffic light....! How would traffic function? At intersections, how would all the cars and motorbikes and bicycles and pedestrians work their way through to the next street? Traffic must continue moving forward, and there can't be eternal gridlock at every streetcorner - no one would stand for that! So you have these motor vehicles which can go as fast as a running cheetah, yet at a light-less intersection, you can't afford accidents every two seconds, so everyone has to slow down and skirt by each other slowly in their general order of arrival; the chaos follows a pattern, as everyone just sort of feels their way through to the next street.... IT takes a little while, but everyone gets where they're going, eventually.... This is exemplary of traffic in India! Oh, AND there are traffic lights here as well! :-/

Just saw "Man Of Steel" opening night with Sujana and Swastik and Sajit; and WOW! They took the quintessential one-dimensional superhero and made IT work for the, uh, modern era! For anyone familiar with the material, IT was clear that a lot of thought went into the players, the theatricality, the ambiance, and the FUN! Haven't seen so much shit flying around and collateral damage since Matrix Revolutions; and, speaking of which - Morpheus got fat! Omg! The scene with him running in the tight dress shirt was priceless, and well-contrived.... Also nice to see Kevin Costner making a well-timed appearance, dragging his bones out of the grave of his career to have them put right back in by a giant CG Kansas tornado! :-D

File under "Real-Life Comedy": Nikhil, in the auditorium with me to see the free "Egaa" movie, asks the girl sitting in the first seat of the row if she can get up so that he can enter the row of seats.... Once she stands up in the aisle, he promptly sits down in the girl's seat and gets comfortable, for one second before he realizes what he's done, and says "Oh, i'm sorry!" as he quickly gets up in embarrassment and moves on down the aisle, as i die laughing X-D

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6/20/13: Nolan Farrell, my doppelganger in Boulder CO, died this past weekend at Sonic Bloom Festival :-(

RIP my fallen doppelganger, Nolan Farrell, who passed away at age 34 during Sonic Bloom Festival last weekend.... We had a crazy four years hearing about each other as the "Long-haired, bearded, guitar-playing Nolans" in Boulder CO without actually speaking or meeting with each other; eventually, enough karma had to build up that someone who knew you well met me somewhere, and i got you my email and phone #.... Finally, we were in first-person contact, and i knew IT was kismet from the very first email you sent to me! You wrote just like i would, full of mythology and spirituality and transcendence, and i knew we were slated to have an epic and auspicious meeting!

Yet the time seemed to stretch on, and our schedules just didn't coordinate; and finally IT took a random encounter (of course!) to bring us finally together: a bluegrass jam up in the First Street Pub in Nederland brought us unknowingly together, and IT took the cosmic prestidigitation of Tiffany Grell to realize with whom she was speaking in the corner by the stage that night, and yell out across the room "Hey NOLAN! Come here!" for our first and only meeting to take place.... Taking a break from the jam and surprised by the summons, i meandered over, and finally met.... Myself!

Nolan Farrell was a scholar and a gentleman, a tech-savvy compu-guy and a musical humanitarian who hid out up in Ned most of the time because he couldn't deal with the hypocrisy and political tightening-of-the-net that he observed around his country of birth; he wished for the freedom for all, and was met with a reality that did not sit well with his kindly and pirateering spirit.... He and i made plans to make music together that never will play out, as i went travelling in Asia two years ago and he went on an ill-fated journey to Sonic Bloom last week; yet i hope that i shall somehow find my musical direction infused and imbued with his spirit, if he cares to share with me from beyond this mortal veil.... You are remembered, my doppelgang brother, and we shall connect through the sheets of dimension now, though worlds of continents and debris may lie between our paths....

Tomorrow morning is the Summer Solstice

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IT is a comforting realization to pop into, that each set of choices we make in our lives brings about a whole shift in lifepath and clear new direction.... Each choice acted upon creates ITs own reality, fully formed and vibrant, which takes off soaring from the flashpoint of action; once launched, this set of constructs will continue onwards, affecting all following circumstances and happenstance....

This occurs for not *one* set of choices, but emphatically for *all*.... Each set of choices then spins off into ITs own reality, running directly parallel to the temporal experience of consciousness, which appears to the naked eye to continue forward unabated! Yet all the while, this newly created paradigm, this renaissance of being, shoots forward unbridled and free to evolve as IT will.... IT may never be experienced by the waking temporal consciousness as a “reality”, yet if ITs future was glimpsed, as something resembling “daydream” or “fantasy”, the process is in motion and is being carried out on a dimensional plane subject to ITs own contracts and whims, and perhaps indelibly removed from our conscious sight....

Many of us lead our lives in the frustration that we have tried and tried to perform actions that “never turn out as we planned”; and although we may beat this dead horse until the cows come home, IT is better that we might lie content in the understanding that though we may not “live to see the fruits of our labors,” in the countless moments that we make our motivated choices, our following actions have created countless parallel existences shimmering invisibly forth.... Actions in which everything that we hoped would spring from our hearts and our minds has come to pass, and carries on ITs legacy unfettered by the seeming caprices of a constantly shifting universe....

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For a random Sunday night, not having any other real "date" options, i took myself on a Hindi dinner-and-a-movie date in CP, eating some "kathi kabab" with really thin roti, and the couple of big cupfuls of raita i needed to dairy-fy my mouth from the piquancy of the delicious dish i was eating! Very much like a soya-based Sloppy Joe with some really thin bread, the meal was richly red and really deliciously-flavored, and i had to really man up to get IT all down.... Without the raita cooling things off, i'm pretty sure i would have been down for the count at the standing-tables-only street food stall with the ragged children watching me in bemusement as i would drool and snot all over myself in a pathetic parody of self-control....

Also, let's just keep in mind as we move forward through the world, that a "kebab" almost anywhere is a bunch of food on a skewer, but please don't think that's what you'll get if you order a "____ kabab" in India, because here, "____ kabab" means "____ mashed and cooked"! Sort of like ordering a "sandwich" and getting sliced vegetables....! :-/

After the festival of nose-blowing and mild hyperventilating, i went across the street to check out "Raanjhanaa" - my first self-Hindi date movie! Showing up at the window to buy the ticket a few minutes before showtime, i was excited to be "right on time"; this was, of course, before the manager behind the ticket window informed me that i could not come in the theater with my shoulder bag, as is general movie policy here in the city.... i looked at him with blank consternation and asked, so what are we gonna do about this? i have no weapons, guns, explosives, or recording devices of any kind! i'm just a regular guy and i'm just here to see a movie! He pointed me around the building and said that i would find a bag-check somewhere vaguely back there somewhere; with the 500-rupee bill still in my hand and shaking my head, i wandered back around behind the building to find.... a liquor stall-store! Beer and wine and 30 drunk guys chaotically mashing up to buy their booze! And not a bag check in sight.... And of course, there's no way in hell i'm leaving my bag with the guys in the liquor store and their drunk clientele.... So back to the front i went, where i showed back up at the window and strongly indicated that there was NOTHING back there, nada zip zilch! And the manager sighed, and sold me the ticket and had me leave my bag with the lady security guard inside; why we couldn't have done this to begin with, i'm still not sure.... He told me to not leave any valuables in the bag, and i replied, "But that's why i have the bag, to carry around my valuables!" Sigh....

However, after examining the munchies counter and finding IT to be entirely devoid of chocolate (a movie-theater first for me), i made IT, after all, "right on time" to my seat as the opening titles began for "Raanjhanaa".... Not a bad flick experience, for me not understanding most of what was said.... Weeell, maybe on second thought, not such a well-done flick either :-/.... Even in the proper Hindi movie, there were still a lot of phrases and sentences in english, enough for me to get a bunch of the language in patches here and there.... Also took a few surreptitious notes on Hindi words throughout the movie.... i'll have to do this more often!

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6/25/13: Happy birthday to me! A lovely guest-of-honor station at the Nirvaaha Organic Happy Tuesday Cafe, playing whatever music suited me in the moment, was my lovely birthday present from the lovely and Tuesdsay-happy Pulkita Parsai, with my dear guru and local tightwad Nikhil Thapar egging me on from the sidelines.... Then, later, a meetup with my Kalimpong family of Akhilesh, Swastik, and Sujana at Harry's Karaoke Lounge in Ansal Plaza, for an evening of too-expensive drinks forgotten in the laughing and singing of many fun tunes, both in Hindi and english, with everything from Blink 182 through Elvis, through to the anti-climactic ending of my "Secret Weapon" karaoke song, which shut down for some reason right in the middle, was re-started by the DJ, then shut down again, and re-started again, at which point i seriously considered throwing in the musical towel; but instead held on to finish out the song for my appreciative friends (all sworn to secrecy on the identity of my "Secret Weapon" song, of course)....

A last hurrah was had out in the deserted outdoor middle of the Ansal Plaza, where a moon over an amphitheater-seating area with a round stage could not be overlooked, and i played "Ghost Riders In The Sky", along with my song "Crystal Lucy" for my friends on the rings of stone seats.... A classic end to a wonderful birthday evening! :-)

*Birthday Message for me from Alan Canselo:*

Happy birthday, my brotha! Sorry thus message arrives a little late, but the past few weeks have been kinda hectic. I live vicariously through your exploits in SE Asia... What a brilliant move on your part. ;-) I need to find my zen, and I shall.

But enough about me, enjoy yourself thoroughly, you're doing great things.

Peace,

Al

- Thank you, my brotha! i'm definitely getting some interesting experiences and views on some very different life-and-lifestyles than we have back home; although, i think the main message which i've been seeing as the running connective throughout these whole travels has been "people are just people, doing the same basic things an a bunch of different ways"....
So in the end, IT all doesn't seem THAT unfamiliar, because wherever i've gone, i can somewhat relate to what people are doing and how they're experiencing things....

i still haven't been island-hopping around Indonesia, going into jungle villages with people wearing bones through their noses and shrunken heads hanging off their belts, so i can't really speak for much other than someone who spends most of their time in relative "civilization", with cell phones and payment plans and rent and the exact same kind of shit we all have back home

And in this regard, i feel like my travels are not as meaningful as they could be, because you don't travel from NYC to Jersey to see what life is like in exotic lands; and that's basically what i've been doing! IT's just that the same-shit, rat-race economic scrounging just happens to have this-or-that cultural flavor attached.... Which is to say, i may not have seen anything really different than i'm used to, even after two years....!

.... i just miss Mexican food ;-)

peace for now, let's be in touch ;-)

*****

Oh, the beautiful yellow-polluted sunsets of Delhi....! To walk out the door and have the city suffused in a brilliant and soft yellow-brown light - how magical! For just a little while, the world is magical again.... And as the light starts to dim towards pink, the orange of the glaring streetlamps begins to insidiously creep into the palette,

Soon becoming
indecipherable from the evening's light,

and once again
the electric sprawl
has conquered all
in sight....

Deeper into Delhi

"i am rich, but i like cheap." - Nikhil Thapar

".... i've learned that forgiving does not mean condoning." - Marci Shimoff, "Happy For No Reason"

India is pungent

*****

Well, i just had my first positively negative experience in India! Trying to get off at the last stop of the purple line of the Metro at Central Secretariat, and unfortunately placed at the end of the disembarking line, the flood of ridiculously impatient passengers did not wait to let everyone off the train, and the handlers at the doors dropped their arms and allowed the flood a few seconds too soon, whereupon i was literally not allowed to leave the train by the incoming wall of shoving people! This was extremely disconcerting, being bodily pushed back by blind stampeding humans, and if i had not had my hard guitar case in front of me, i might have felt even more bodily assaulted than i did.... i would have been forced back into the car by the unseeing human tide, and held hostage as the train would have taken me back from whence i had come; but some people behind me who were also in the same predicament pushed me forward from behind, using my guitar case as a battering ram, and literally pushed me out through the wall of humanity gushing inwards.... i had a vague sense of being birthed, somehow; yet this innocent awe was washed away by my overwhelming feelings of bewilderment and indignation, being unable to believe that the average metro-riding public could be as blind and dysfunctional as i had just experienced....

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Chelna hai, to chalo! (Come, or go!) For the rick guys.... :-D Thanks Lori!

Here i lie, in a handsome brand-new khadi kurta and funnypants, on Nikhil's sister's bed, while Nikhil argues about exchange rates with the money man who agreed to come late-evening to his house to work out his private rupees-to-baht conversion for his upcoming journey to Thailand, on the morrow.... Meanwhile, we shape up to be over two hours late to the wedding, which i have so lovingly dressed for, showering and washing my feet anxiously in anticipation of this joyous event that just never seems to come....

Jamrock Academy?
MusiQwest Academy - Encouraging exploration and expression of Music for all ages!

Important dream elements: Whoo boy.... Umm, okay, the Germans had invaded Scarborough in England, where we all were (me & my friends), and we had to get out as secretly and quickly as possible to avoid being taken complete prisoner during this new world wartime.... i tried to take Laura home with me to M&D's, and called beforehand (even though i was calling from my old room in their place!) to check in about IT; Dad was okay with IT, but the woman he was living with was really NOT okay with IT (and this was not my mom) and started making a fuss on the phone, giving her reasons why IT wouldn't be okay for her.... Later, Alan and i went traveling back through time, through some sort of subway tunnel-looking mechanism, to visit the Scarborough of the future, and found IT to be German-free and quite pleasant, and IT was a kick to see the place where we had been staying years ago, where we genially asked the old housekeeper guy what year IT was, and tipped our hand about who we were as time-travelers....

Coke Studios MTV, good source for local music styles and sounds! Thanks Parvathi, for the rec!

Lakdi ki Kathi - the wooden cart!

Lakdi ki kathi, kathi pe ghoda, ghode ki dum pe jo mara hathoda, dauda dauda dauda ghoda, dum utha ke dauda!

Bijoy, smiley owner of Furtado's Music in Delhi and bassist for Moonshine - met last year down in their music store basement.... Also met Wangdi, other guitarist for Moonshine - solid guy and solid player

Onstage Music in Lajpat Nagar, my man Martin who worked on my guitar last year! Sweet guy, go visit!

Boogeta-down, de boogety-BOP BOP - nice six

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Arsalan, first official guitar student! Woo hoo

.... Who wound up being a no-call-no-show on the first class.... Not very class-y!

Wow, i had some kind of a breakthrough practice tonight on the Harvey and the G3X, looping the main groove from "La Grange" by ZZ Top.... i jammed that shit for close to three hours, experimenting with licks and triplets the whole time, economy picking, alternate picking, and man! i mean, i was just in blues, mixo, and major the whole time, and was just picking, nothing fancy like sweeping or nothing, but still! i had IT going on there for a while, plus i lost track of how many different licks i tried tonight that i've never played before at full speed, or just flat never played at all! i was on some kind of experimentation fire tonight! i felt like i'm touching on competency.... Gotta keep IT up.... ;-)

"You wake up like a Mexican wave." - Paro :-D

*****

Sitting/standing up straight is a great metaphor for the internal work of realizing peace and contentment.... Some of us naturally have an upright posture, and find IT easy to maintain as IT is the standard and default; yet many of us have succumbed to our various gravities and dournesses, and move about or sit in a perpetual slouch.... For these curled folks, IT takes a conscious act of will to choose to raise up into a more upright position, and an even stronger choice to maintain IT....

In the same manner, choosing and maintaining an inner composure which clings neither to the highs of ecstasy nor the lows of despair requires some rigorous attention from most; and even riding the fine line of contentment in the middle is an art in and of ITself.... To make a choice to view the world surrounding with a small smile, for no reason at all, is akin to making the choice to raise the shoulders up and the neck back, and feel one's whole form straighten and glow! So often, we may find ourselves gliding along a track of composure, not too high and not too low; but we have a perfectly straight mouth, or perhaps a slight frown, and a sense of our surroundings as foreign or alien, no matter how familiar they might be.... This default of disconnected contentment is perhaps not inherently destructive, but IT does not produce an abundance of health and vitality, whereas the choice to rise up, be IT in the shoulders or merely in the corners of the mouth, produces a small yet profound effect upon the health, longevity, and enjoyment of our being.... Try IT sometime! Or lots of times, if needs be....

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Slice of India: Walking to the nearby market holding hands with Shiv, having him lead me by the hand across the street of oncoming traffic like a little boy.... :-)

Youth Parliament, collection of do-gooders that might be able to hook me up with students, says first Neha of the Monsanto march in Delhi

The world-wide March on Monsanto! May 25th of this year 2013 brought thousands of people throughout the world out to the streets to protest Monsanto's outrageous dealings in systematically-lethal agriculture; in Delhi, a brave 20 or 30 folks showed up to the Jantar Mantar to voice their wishes for organic and healthy food for the people of this land.... i held up a sign reading "BOYCOTT AMERICAN SOYA & CORN PRODUCTS", and eventually got on the crackly microphone to speak to the gathered crowd of people while Rachna Arora translated for me in Hindi.... i explained that i was a citizen of the USA, and that i would prefer to not be standing here holding a sign that asks people to boycott business with my country of origin; but that the ethically reprehensible manner in which this business is conducted by the corporations and government of the USA makes IT my ethical duty to voice my wishes and recommend that the global community cease to do business with these agricultural interests until the people who run them decide that compassion, empathy, and human health must be the top priorities in the way their business operates.... Until sanity and compassion are the foundations of the business of getting people food, i explained, i must regrettably stand here and hold this sign, because the government that supposedly represents ITs people in the USA does NOT represent ITs people in these matters, representing only the bloated multinational corporations that seek to squeeze money out of the bodies of the customers which their products disease.... For whatever IT's worth, i was proud to stand out in the Delhi heat today in solidarity with the conscious  and caring segment of our global human family....

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i like these rick guys who ask you what you think a fair price to your destination should be :-)

Here at DLF Mall in Saket, listening to ear-splitting metal songs that all sound exactly the same, one after the other, and quite underwhelmed by the ball-stroking wanking of Andy James, "The Shred Machine" :-/

Check out Baiju, Karnatic electric maestro who was supposed to do the "workshop" with The Shred Machine.... Probably a lot more fun! :-D

Here in this new Millennium, IT seems like facts are becoming a little softer.... "A little more giddy, a little more gay...." There's so much information available in this internet-based paradigm, and for any given piece of "info", you can usually always find some other piece of "info" which directly contradicts the first; and so one can sort of pick and choose what "facts" one wants to understand as the basis of reality, rather than adhering to the "truth" as we may have conceived IT in the past.... Hmm :-/

"Please do not befriend any unknown person." - The Electronic Lady Voice on the Delhi Metro (This is about as un-India as you can get, IMO!)

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This, my flesh-covered corpse

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SMS to Parvathi, morning of May 31st:

Paro, IT's insane.... i'm still awake.... WTF is going on? i knew pickling Nikhil up at the airport at 4 am was gonna be bizarre, but we're still awake and have picked up an Australian, and now we're all at his house at 5:30 waking up the whole family.... Crying babies and juice boxes.... Somebody wake me up out of this

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.... i just can't help IT; in my over-exaggerated mind, the Electronic Man's Voice on the Delhi Metro just sounds so, uh, suggestive!, whenever he says the upcoming station names! Like he's announcing sultry brothels to train cars full of cigar-smoking "gentlemen"....

"i turned off the fan because we are not learning guitar." - Karan Veer, the Impatient and Nonsensical (also my first official guitar student)

Just a thought; maybe this computer thing just isn't supposed to happen! What has IT been, two weeks now i've had this thing (Acer Aspire V5) without being able to use IT, because of IT coming really cheap with no OS and Ubuntu not just easily going on and working? W T F?

Slice of India: i, for the seemingly-thousandth time in my life, clog up the toilet that is in the always-locked washroom upstairs in Little Wonders.... i embarrassedly go before Mrs. Singh, the kindly Principal-Ma'am, having her lunch with the ladies, to request to use the plunger; to which she replies, "No, that's Nawal's washroom [the martial-arts manager downstairs], we never deal with IT, tell him about IT." i protest, saying no no, i'll be happy to take care of IT, may i just use your plunger? The ladies look at each other confusedly, and Mrs. Singh says, unselfconsciously, "There isn't one." In utter disbelief, i protest again, saying no no, that can't be the case, every place with bathrooms needs a plunger, to which Mrs. Singh replies, "Well we don't clean that washroom." And, afraid that we are edging further and further away from reality, i beg of her, "But you have bathrooms for the school! One here in this room, one there, one there.... You need a plunger, at least for the school, for when something goes wrong with the toilets! What happens when the toilets get backed up?" And Mrs. Singh drily replies, "The maids make do." About to lose my tenuous grip on my sanity, i take my leave, offering to buy a house plunger for the school and asking where i might purchase one; to which kindly Mrs. Singh bullseyes my balloon of reason with a last parting dart: "i'm not sure.... Ask Manoj downstairs to go out and get one for you."

Epilogue: Not Shiv's whole Bihari family living upstairs, nor Nawal, nor Manoj, knew of a plunger anywhere within a 10-km radius of the Little Wonders building, and no one generally had any idea where one might be purchased.... As IT turns out, i may be the first person in the history of the Little Wonders Playschool to clog a toilet; keeping my status and surreal streak of stopping up toilets firmly intact, numbering in the seeming-thousands and stretching out in a galactic swath of shattered white porcelain behind me, wherever i may go....

*****

So, just for once, I've like to yet a little experiment, and just see how this written paragraph turns out if I don't correct anything that the autocorrect corrects incorrectly for me as I type.... IT is hard to fathom, hersey to believe, exactly how much time and energy I have spent in producing properly-written passages with this swype keyboard on mJ phone; IT swarms as though every time I sit down to write, and try to write with some semblance of my normal, usual flow, I wind up dipping on every other word to retrace my my literary steps, as IT were, to take care of unfinished business that pops up unasked answer most visibly unwanted.... Andr just tonight, after months of silently fruiting and bemoaning my fate as am electronic writer (with occasional boys of screams and roars of frustration), IY occurred top me top a little experiment, and just leave everything a IT falls; for surely there must be some victory in at least feeling the property flute one again, and not lending thought not winkle of brow top the dreadful and leering scads of corrections that seem to fastened to my fingers linger the ponderous chains of Jacob Market, on a cold and lonely christmas eve night with Ebenezer Scrooge...

"Life is short - Don't rush IT" - Delhi anti-speeding advert o_O

Baroda and Back!

Hello Baroda!

Ba-by Shark doo doo, doo doo doo-doo!

The cast of characters on my journey to Baroda so far: Vinali, Shanth, Shiva, Bhumika, Gargesh, Ashish, Sanjiv, Auntie Aruna, Uncle Gopi, Shebhum the dedicated keyboardist, Thomas the romantic singer-songwriter, Schoen the provider of illicit booze, Sanderijn the Dutch sound guy, Ragou the loud benefactor, Ojusva the little bro, Rajinda(?) the transformational facilitator, Suwarchela the Principal-Ma'am, and Sasha the somewhat-dykey caterer (who made THE richest meal i've had in India, hands-down.... i've never had butter paneer like that, before or maybe henceforth! Damn, girl!)

Shanth and Shiva Swaroop are a pair of unexplainably charismatic brothers who live with their parents, Aruna the wonderful educator and Gopi the Astrologer Baba, in a homey apartment in the middle of Vadodara, the "Cultural Capital of Gujarat ("Baroda" to the homies), along with their good friend, the sweet and sincere Ashish, and the lovely and resourceful Gargesh, Shanth's "better half".... Shanth is a big bear of a guy in body and a tender soul in spirit, as well as a lover of all things guitar and dark-rock-style; he and i met on a train last year and bonded over guitar talk during the long train hours, forging a connection of the sort where we knew we'd be seeing each other again! His younger brother, Shiva, is the drummer of the family, and has been in the long and artistically arduous process of making a band happen for the last three years - with which i can relate! Shiva is intense and brooding, when he becomes distracted from the fun and interest life has to offer, and philosophic, curious, and wry when he's on his game.... i feel like i've met him somewhere before! One of those things.... Shanth and Shiva's family has been very welcoming and kind to me, letting me stay in their place in the air-conditioned room - along with Shanth, Arpita, and Shiva all sleeping on the floor next to me like refugees! i tried to protest, and at least give the couple the mattress, but they all vigorously declined.... What could i do but say thanks?

*****

A bleary 7 AM drag-myself-out-of-bed brought me, on the back of Vinali's scooter, to the week-long Education Workshop which she was attending, where she had secured me a special invitation as a fellow-educator.... Little did i understand that this was a Ladies' Empowerment Workshop, provided for educators to assist in the process of becoming better educators! And the bright sunlit morning found me seated in the circle sticking out like a sore thumb as the lone white male amongst 12-15 Indian females of varying ages; the workshop was conducted in english, mainly, yet several of the women spoke no english, and IT was clear to me as the all-day session went on, that the language was consistently being done for my convenience, and they had to translate important parts for the Hindi-speaking ladies, rather than just speaking in Hindi the whole time.... This made me very self-conscious and disturbed that i was creating a language-barrier in the room, purely unintentionally; i appreciated the kindness in their conducting the session so that i could understand IT, but certainly not at the expense of the comprehension of ladies who ACTUALLY WERE SUPPOSED to be there....! i quite enjoyed the content of NVC-style conscious communication and empathy being discussed, and chipped in as seemed appropriate throughout the morning and afternoon; but at the day's end, when invited to return the following day, i found myself mumbling some half-hearted semi-positive niceties, knowing that there would be no way i would be returning to the ladies' circle the next day, to which i had so kindly been invited....

*****

Oh, hanging out with Sanjiv and Bhumika is so spiritually invigorating! Everything is Maya, nothing exists, we do not exist; therefore, when we speak to each other, we don't really hear anything, and the person speaking to us isn't really there.... And neither are we! This makes for some very, very amusing interactions, speaking with Sanjiv who continually insists that he is not there....! :-D

*****

Thanks to Vinali and her "Sacred Business Program" conference call with some honky facilitator dude in the States, i had the opportunity tonight (in guided conference-call meditation) to meet my future self from twenty years down the line, somewhere out on a stone bench in a forest clearing.... Future Me was wearing a yellow-with-brown designs trippy shirt, and had graying beard and dreds shot through with gray hanging down my future back; we hung out together in silence very comfortably for a little bit, enjoying the paradoxical weirdness of the moment.... Finally, i asked myself the only question that i was interested in asking: "So.... Did we ever get IT all figured out?" And i responded, "Are you kidding me?" with a wry grin.... i chuckled and we ruminated on this for a minute, while the very white facilitator dude tinnily tapped on his shamanic drum, somewhere far away inside the phone.... i turned back over to continue the conversation with myself, JUST AS the self-styled shamanic sacred-business facilitator started whiningly chanting some sort of pseudo-native-American "hey-yuh-hi-yuh-hey-yuh-wah-wah", so loudly and gratingly that any further conversation proved impossible; we looked at each other sardonically, shaking our heads and smiling, as we both silently agreed that the facilitator dude was preventing the very interaction that he was supposed to be facilitating.... The image reminded us of two lovers in a gorgeous Italian restaurant, on a romantic date, and the guy is about to propose marriage to the girl, when an oblivious violin player saunters up to the table to play a romantic violin solo for the budding lovers, and plays so loud and long that IT becomes a tragicomedy, never leaving the table, and never opening his eyes to see the disgusted looks on the faces of the terminally-bored couple.... By the time our facilitator stopped giving IT his best ooga-ooga, he was meditatively-guiding us out of the forest, thanking our future selves for showing up and talking to us.... i and i threw each other a last humorous smile, and took our parting of ways....

*****

Here i sit, alone in the gardens of the Museum of Baroda, under the cooling shade of a tree in the hot afternoon sun, surrounded by pieces of India's archaeology standing on pedestals placed all through the garden's pathways.... Feeling blessed to be in India

Sir George Clausen, photorealistic British painter, mid-1850's? Beautiful style, look him up!

The flamboyantly gay prince of Gujarat! DammIT, i could have paid him 2000 rupees to hang out with me! And he would have shown up for dinner with an entourage and riding an elephant! ):-(

Nicholas Roerich, artist traveler and chronicler of eastern medicine and mysticism, look him up! Rec from Sanjiv

The Fun Park! Cotton candy and "popcron", The Breakdance, shooting balloons.... Fun for the whole fam!

*****

Gargesh, who manages the beautifully-styled RCA Music Academy, has kindly offered me the opportunity to conduct a guitar workshop for the RCA students as a guest instructor this week! i am honored, and excited to be able to share some education time with interested kids here in town! This will be my first instructional workshop class that i've ever held.... At the tender age of 37!

*My Musical Bio*

Nolan McFadden, from New York City, USA, has been playing guitar for 23 years, and singing all his life.... A veteran of the Antifolk scene in the East Village of NYC, and a jam-band and improvisational rock guitarist in Boulder and Denver, Colorado, Nolan has been traveling in Asia since 2011, playing for dancing people in China, India, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Singapore.... Nolan has played in such bands as IT, Unbroken Chain, Dirty Water, The Penthouse Sessions, The Left Channel, Strange New Worlds, Maps Of Malta, The Moment, Conscious Sleep, Heavy Meadow, and The Spicy Tacos; and in Thailand, The Wakefield-McFadden Acoustic Duo, and the authentic latin sound of Los Puentes (The Bridges)! He lists his main influences as the Sun and the Moon, and dreams of flying around the world in a hot-air balloon with nothing but his guitar and his Taro cards!

Here's links to some of Nolan's music online: www.myspace.com/themomentmusical
www.soundcloud.com/nolan-mcfadden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8313g0NghQ (Los Puentes demo video)

Syllabus for my RCA Guitar Workshop:

1) Intro of self - Storytime!
2) Main components of musical direction: Covers/Songwriting/Improvisation....Examples!
3) Solo playing & Group music - Pros & Cons
4) Live examples of Solo vs. Group
5) Practice & Motivation - FUN and Make IT Fun! And - What Do You Want To Do?
6) Applying Practice to Performance - Integration!
7) Reading The Audience / Professional Listening
8) Being an Artist!
9) Q & A

So much for planning! The actual workshop was, uh, a bit different than i had expected; i had imagined a room with five to ten teenage kids, where i would have the chance to get to know the attendees a little bit, ask them some questions and let them ask me some as well during the course of the workshop.... Talk about my life, show them things on the guitar in which they might be interested.... However, the reality rearing ITs head was a lot of chairs set up in the big main lobby area at RCA, and eventually, a packed room of maybe thirty people, all of ages from six or seven up through older folks, and me at the front commanding the space from a chair behind my guitar! Both the guitar and my mic were being run through a PA, which had terrible sound for the guitar, and even Sanderijn the happy Dutch sound engineer could do nothing to save my sound.... The two-hour workshop was a minor nightmare for me, as the lecture-style format of the room's setup was not at all attuned to my naturally-interactive delivery style, and every time i tried to get people talking or ask questions, the room would be as silent as the grave - indicating that people either did not understand anything i was saying, or were completely unwilling to engage in a public forum.... Either way, there was basically two hours of me doing a loooot of talking, and some playing of the guitar and singing, mostly as an accompaniment to my ruminations on artistry and as examples of my songwriting; during which, people seemed to enjoy the music while IT lasted, and would then return to shockingly zombie-like states during my lengthy speeches which followed....

The clock ticked on, and on, as i spoke about practice habits, musicianship as a career, and the true intent of the artist in society to an audience that seemed so planted and silent that birds should have been nesting and pooping on some of them.... A couple of intrepid teenage kids finally asked me a couple of questions during my wistful "Q&A" section towards the end, which i answered a little too eagerly, as starved as i was for some sort of human interaction.... Finally, mercifully, the clocks hands slid into the proper position, and i thanked everyone for being such a patient audience and bid everyone adieu 'til next time, where i hope the setting will somehow be more conducive to real interaction.... Afterwards, amid the handshaking and hugs, i was assured by Arpita that people had really enjoyed the talk, and were just too shy to interact or speak up (also too shy to admit that they didn't fully understand my accent and my general speech).... i thanked her for her sweet little lies, and hoped that SOMEONE had gotten SOMETHING out of the ghastly two hours; i went to the bathroom and splashed some water on my face, trying to prepare myself for what i assumed would be the easy part coming up next, the hour of performance for whoever cared to stick around....

And somehow, the sound on the PA had become EVEN SHITTIER during the break, and as i dug in and gritted my way through my songs, Sanderijn turned knobs left and right and just kept shrugging in confusion and apology in the corner of my eye, as i heard my sound go from bad to worse and back up to bad again.... Sanderijn is a pro audio tech, and knows exactly what the hell he's doing, and so once again we see the value of spending the bucks on a really high-quality system; as your shit can look as impressive as you want, but if the internals are made out of gumballs and goo, your sound is going to be shit and even the pro's pro behind the board is going to have to go home with their head hanging down.... i played maybe five songs, and was regretting going on even that far, so i apologized to the audience for the terrible sound, played my current favorite "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" by James Taylor, and departed the floor.... Next time, world, next time....

*****

Ojusva! Good kid from Baroda, fights with his parents all the time, needs big bro - met at my Baroda workshop

Handwo - Gujarati masala cake

"Prepare your anus." - Shanth :-D

Observing a couple of guitar classes in progress at RCA to get a sense of how music school is done here in India, i noticed that if i were running the show, i would have to completely revamp how these classes were being run: five kids in a room, with acoustic guitars, all in various levels of playing skill and all playing different things, so the room spins with the cacaphony of musical asymmetry.... Meanwhile, the two teachers sit on the sidelines, silent and letting the kids just kind of do their things without so much as a suggestion here or there, for the most part! Sitting on the sidelines myself, i could not stop myself from telling one of the kids i liked what he was doing, and giving a couple of pointers; one girl was doing a scale over and over pretty well, and i chirped in to show her a different scale she could try.... The teachers amusedly watched me interacting with their students, smiling at each other as if i was the naive one in the room! i felt like i had fallen down some kind of educational rabbit-hole into La-La-Land.... Now i know how NOT to run my guitar classes, anyway....!

*****

Living a choiceless life! This and many other tidbits of Baba-wisdom were imparted to me during a full-on astrological reading from professional astrologer and life-coach Jayagopi (Uncle), Shanth & Shiva's dad, down at his little office in a busy section of Baroda town.... His astrological profile of me described me as romantic, easy-going, enjoying the support of friends; having a strong physique and good at games/sports; very creative with a lot of imagination; talented in music and fine-arts skills; having had met with a few vehicular accidents and suffered a few broken relationships; and that finding my life-partner will bring lady luck to life, where although i will meet with initial marital troubles, later all will be good.... Apparently, i need to take care until Jan. 16, 2014, as my major period running from Jan. of 1996 until this nearby time in my current life comes to an end, and i should preferably go back home (presumably to the States) ASAP, to take the most care, i guess.... i'm not going home anytime soon (not that i know of!), so i'll just have to take my chances out in the big bad world! Hey, at least now i have traveler's insurance! Thanks Mom & Dad! And thank you to Uncle for a brilliant and insightful session of life-advice, compassionately and kindly given from a gentleman who clearly wants the best peaceful lives for everyone on earth! Such an honor and a pleasure to be gifted a full helping of wisdom and kindness at one sitting! Much love and thanks :-)

*****

What i say to Facebook: "An amazing week in beautiful Baroda! Full of new meetings, new family, new friends, and opportunities to share experiences, Taro readings, Gujarati food, and love! Many thanks and unending gratitude to Shanth Swaroop, Shiva Swaroop, Vinali Doshi, Arpita Gargesh, Bhumika Patel, Sanjiv Valsan, Thomas Albert, Shubham Kamat, Sanderijn Wagenvoorde, RCA Music Academy, and the folks who made me feel like family as soon as i hit town.... Much love to everyone and i can't wait to return to Baroda! ;-)"

What i say in journalling: "All in all, i took a trip to Baroda this past week to visit friends, and am now back on the Paschim Express, returning to Delhi with a new family down in Vadodara, unexpected and warm and welcoming of my bizarre musical presence in their midst (thanks to Auntie Aruna and my new Baba Gopi); when you have the kinds of friends that you can't tell apart from family, then i guess you've got family! Much love to Shanth, Shiva, Gargesh, and Ashish, along with dear Vinali, my self-conscious guru, and the solid and ever-amazing Bhumika; and in the end, the main refrain seemed to be "You must come back, and come back to stay" from all quarters, which would prove an almost-undeniable pull - if only Baroda had a music scene! But alas(?), Gujarat is a dry state, with no alcohol or bars in which to hang out or play, and there is basically no scene for western music or musicians to peddle their musical wares.... Apparently there are plenty of classical Indian concerts, if i would like to truly convert and turn the musical page over to a life in India, or Baroda specifically; yet something tells me that being somewhere with the opportunity to continue performing my schtuff is going to provide the proper environment for the blooming of my heart.... We shall see"

Delving into Delhi

Greetings and Salutations, good people of Earth!

IT has been far too long since i was able to see my way clear to posting and writing here, on this, my account of experiences out in the wide, wide world; and now i hope to return, with renewed fervor and fortitude, to the inscription of my time here on this plane and planet! My "adventures in Thailand" and across northern India last year will have to remain as yet unwritten for now, as i must simply jump back onto my present-time narrative for the sake of proper contemporaneity....

~~~~~

Wow, as i sit here in seat 17C on the IndiGo plane, waiting for takeoff out of Thailand; even as i attempt to remain scrupulously attentive to the moment, i cannot help but recall a November night shortly before Thanksgiving of 2011, not so long ago really!, when i sat in a similar plane on a similar runway in Guangzhou, unable to believe that my dreams and plans of a solo journey to India were manifesting in front of my eyes as an enmeshed and uber-dramatic partner-travel with Tiffany, who had NOT been initially booked on my plane.... Bizarre to the max

i was, as i recall, so livid and in such a shock of disbelief that i could not really process what was going on around me; only trudging forward with a hazy awareness that Tiffany and i were going to India together, whether i liked IT or not, and who the hell could know what was coming next....

Despite the relative insanity of the events which have led us all to be where we are currently, in this loopy year of 2013, i am thankful and feel very blessed to have the opportunity of a lifetime happening right now: the experience i hoped to have had a year-and-a-half ago is finally happening! i am on a plane headed (in a few minutes) to India, on my own and not particularly attached to anyone or anything, oh except for my guitars and the G3X! i'm SUPER attached to them! :-/

i have the chance to explore what is going on for me, and where the fuck i'm at, without regular minute-by-minute distraction by emotionally-demonstrative partner-people! And i get to do IT in India! Wow, I'm sleepy.... and we're about to take off.... And they're gonna make me turn off my electronic device in a minute.... Well.... Avanti! See u on da flip side dogggg

And here.... We.... Go!

~~~~~

.... i'm back!

IT's 7:00 in the morning as the sun seeps out through the soft orange polluted haze over Delhi; 400 rupees is taking me in an airport taxi/familyvan back to the only home i know here in Delhi, the Little Wonders Playschool....

Sign on side of Delhi truck: "Tool Boox"

"The drinking will continue until the economy improves" - Old Delhi man's t-shirt

- An excellent re-meet with my ol' friend Karan Jain, the Emperor of Little Wonders Playschool in New Friends Colony of Delhi; i am officially embarking (after a week of solemn deliberations to figure out what shape the whole thing should take) upon the creation of a "school of rock"-type music school, to be housed here in the Little Wonders building, adding a USP (Unique Selling Point) to the already-full array of educational ventures packed into the same place (Day Care, Spoken English, Standardized-test tutoring, Martial arts studio, Flow India educational NGO).... This opportunity is one which no one has ever afforded me back in my country of origin, and dang if IT doesn't sort of feel like the kind of thing i was wondering if i might find, out here in the big world when i started these journeys - somewhere where someone ACTUALLY WANTED me, with my peculiar skills and talents, to stay and do something really cool! And i feel SUPER GRATEFUL for this opportunity, and i hope that i am expressing this enough to Karan and everyone involved!

So now i live in the basement corner office, and when i say office i mean office! IT has a big official glass-top desk at one end, with a big black official office chair behind IT, and that's IT! i sleep on a green kiddie futon chair that folds out flat into a bed of sorts, and pack IT up every day so that IT can go back upstairs so the kiddies can take their naps on IT....

The ladies who work the preschool upstairs seem to find IT bizarre and somewhat unseemly that a ferengi is living downstairs in trippy shirts and Thai fisherman's pants, and coming upstairs barefoot every morning to brush his teeth and take a kneeling faucet shower under a rusty knobless tap in the locked "executive washroom"; yet they silently accept that their job description now includes bringing me chai and toast in the mornings, and a vegetarian lunch of any combination of potatoes, dal, red beans, okra, roti, and/or rice in the afternoons, where i generally eat with "KaranSir" in his Imperial Office and talk about the state of the world, why we STILL haven't seen "Iron Man 3" yet, and discuss how exactly one goes about creating a music school from scratch....

By day, i go guitar-in-hand and plinking away into a roomful of wide-eyed three-year-old summer camp kiddies, and wow them by making weird and funny noises, that generally (i hope) communicate the high and low sounds involved in music; they follow suit, and soon i have a roaring and raucous cacaphony of kids singing IT up as best they can, followed by some songs (i have only learned one Hindi kid's song so far, Lakdi Ki Kathi) and a little version of musical chars without the chairs, where everybody sits down ON THEIR BUTTS! ON YOUR BUTTS! Come on, ON YOUR BUTTS! :-D i do this for three different classes for 10 - 15 minutes each in the late mornings, Mon - Thurs, as recompense for my generous free housing in the prim basement office; before which, on one or two days a week, i go down in the basement common area to conduct an hour-long music class with the summer camp for Flow India, and the cute little kiddies they entertain and educate down there....

By night, i venture out into the dusty and choking air of Delhi, the metropolitan capital of India, to find out where the cool people congregate and where the live music happens.... A hard-won autorick ride, only to be had after waiting on a deserted nighttime corner in New Friends Colony (NFC) and haggling over the price with the crafty driver, brings me to Hauz Khas Village, where most of this town's fun folks and musical happenings seem to converge; the pricy nature of the nightlife ensures that only a certain, um, class of people make their way out to party the night away in Hauz Khas, and between the low-cut dresses and shiny shirts and impeccable hairstyles evident in thronging numbers on the saturday night backstreet strip, i begin to wonder if Hauz Khas is really REALLY the cool spot to hang out in Delhi.... But after several weeks of exploration, the verdict is in: you're not going to find a larger collection of artistic and cultural events all in one place, and contrived for the partying masses, even at 350 rupees for a beer with 43% taxes added to round IT out at an even 500 rupees! Never seen anything like these "taxes" ever in my ever-lovin' life.... :-/

~~~~~

Mihir, the cheesy solo acoustic classic rock guitarist from the Raasta Bar in Hauz Khas Village - come to his next cheesy solo acoustic show in Cafe 79 near Saket on Saturday at 5 pm!

Ash, hand drummer; like brother to Joy, owner of Raasta Bar in Hauz Khas Village, call him for gig May 1st!

Meraz birthday boy salsa dancer! Call him for a good time! :-D

Note To Self: Google Maps, while being super-handy and sometimes a lifesaver, is NOT the gospel of our physical reality, and is actually quite fucking wrong sometimes! Take everything Google Maps says with a grain of salt! You'll be happier for IT!

That's just how life goes! Translation: i just (while walking along a darkened parkside street in my first week in Delhi, playing around on my new tablet and paying no attention to my surroundings) fell into a giant open sewage hole, smack in the middle of an otherwise flat sidewalk.... i sprained my left foot, covered myself in diseased offal, and dropped my $250 new tab into the liquid shit.... IT is dead and i am in a state of shock, trying to head home as fast as i can, covered in smelly shit, limping, trying to laugh about the comedy of IT but too in pain and busy feeling like an idiot and an asshole to really pull IT off.... But that's just how life goes! The only positive is that my acoustic guitar that was on my back is (i believe) unharmed by the incident.... Which is really really good! Because i would probably be crying for sure if I had damaged my guitar as well in this act of complete idiocy and pathetic dunderheadedness.... Aaand upon my non-triumphant return home, i discovered that my guitar had indeed received a nasty blow to ITs bottom sideboard, and has a baby-fist sized crunch that looks gnarly and made me freak the fuck out when i saw IT.... IT isn't probably that bad though, mostly cosmetic and not affecting the playability at all.... Anyone with superglue and a will to repair can probably make IT happen....

Wow, i just remembered that in my dream last night/this morning, i learned how to levitate! IT was pretty easy, as i recall; a sort of combo of breathwork and physicality, where with each breath i took a little "oomph" upwards, sort of like yoga but going up one rung of air each time, until finally floating and dangling many feet above the ground.... Not exactly flying, but good enough, i'd say! :-)

Rumi, older richy furniture-designing lady, pretty uptight and seems like she throws down a lot of vodka at night! Nice lady, though.... Met while picking up new furniture for Karan's house

Performer's Collective in GK-2, Jack Thomas - director, go visit!.... Recommended by my man, luthier Karan Singh of Bigfoot Custom Guitars in Delhi, who is attempting to fix my axe....

Wow, i had a lot of really vivid dreams last night! A lot of running and hiding, but not the dire nightmare kind.... Heading out from a nice deck seating area at night to hide, out into a darkened waterless ocean floor, with all kinds of naturally luminescent flowering plants, and crawling around among them.... Trying to hide Tracy Chapman's dismembered body parts with Eric Hoaglund by the ocean at night, on the beach with lots of people walking around; i got her head down to the water and buried IT in the sand just before someone saw me.... Eating various fruiting parts of various cacti, as well as edible parts of other cacti.... Making a birthday gift bag for my deceased Uncle Dan, trying to keep out anything in IT having to do with Obama, to discourage Uncle Dan from smoking.... Fucking bizarre

Met Vikram from Delhi band "Philosophy Of Life" on the metro, he said find them on ReverbNation! Recommended Furtado's Guitar Shop in Lajpat Nagar

Global Music Insitute Delhi, where Adhir, guitarist of Five8 teaches

Ravi, Waiter @ Hard Rock Cafe who invites me for heavy drinking at his place in North Delhi

Surita, mom of keyboard student; recommended me to set up a young kid's music program at Performer's Collective

Shelley Delhi - super cool somewhat-squat Brit lady, working for Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Delhi for eight years - met at 39 Restaurant for the Syncopation show, keep in touch for further shows!

"While i was musing the fire burned" - quote in brass letters across the fireplace mantel in 39 Restaurant in Hauz Khas Village

Wow, two winners in two nights! Last night, an original band called Five8 at the Hard Rock Cafe in Saket, great singer, players, a Miguel-Ramos-people-type named Shiv on keys, bass player Steve's birthday, guitarist Adhir may have hooked me up with a job at the place where he teaches, their jam rock originals were sweet! Then tonight, Syncopation rocked my world at the 39 Restaurant in Hauz Khas Village with their Schofield-esque original trio instrumentals.... Not often I get two improv-rock treats in two nights! Yay Delhi! :-D

Pavan Buragohain, luthier and creative director of animated film "Arjun - The Warrior Prince".... This lovely gentleman patched my acoustic so well that i just might forget what an idiot i was to fall into that hole in the first place! :-D

"Seat reserved for Senior Citizens & Differently Abled" - Delhi Metro sign

- Personal and "People" Space seems to have a very different set of meanings in India than i am used to from back home in the States.... A total stranger will think nothing of halfway holding your hand while holding onto the same pole in the Metro, or halfway sitting on your lap if you have a seat in a row of sitting people, squeezing themselves next to you into a non-existent seat-space.... On the Metro, people will cluster together as though the train car is over-filled, while bizarrely leaving a large pool of standing space empty and ignored over on the side; and when the train stops and the doors open, the simple action of people who are waiting for the train standing to the side to let the passengers off DOES NOT HAPPEN! Everyone stands directly in front of the doors, preventing passengers from disembarking, while beginning to insanely push their way forward into the crowded train car.... People who wish to get off the train have to fight their way off, through an incoming wall of crazed metro-riders, just to get off at their desired stop! And of course, if they were just let off first, there would be no need for the crazed push forward by the impatiently-waiting mob; but this particular concept and act of sanity has not yet entered into the popular consciousness, IT seems, and men in uniform enforcing space boundaries are utilized in some Metro stations to create a sane and functional space for the public on their transit..... The transit workers must grab and shove people, acting as human walls to make the crowd on the platform stand to the side of the doors, rather than right in the middle, as the train pulls in.... Enforcing actions which i have seen subway riders undertake themselves, of their own volition, a thousand times and more back in New York City....

.... Taking a short trip to Baroda for a week to visit Vinali and Shanth and Bhumika, and wow, amazing.... Somehow, i managed to forget how incredibly backward and confusing train travel is here in India! i got so used to thinking about IT as cheap and easy over the past year, that i neglected to remember the giant shoving, crushing crowds; the train numbers and track numbers that aren't posted on the big board (today's sampling showed only trains scheduled to leave at noon or one o'clock at four in the afternoon).... The one guy behind the glass at the big information booth that is talking on his mobile and paying no attention to anyone behind the window who might have questions; the many different train numbers listed on the electronic sign at Platform 5 (supposedly the correct platform, verified by both the uninterested information guy and a policeman) - none of which displayed are for your train, a mere twenty minutes before the train is supposed to leave; the throngs of sitting, standing, moving people on the platform, so many that one can barely walk around for the feet and bags and hands and heads that one may step upon or smash into if one ventures forth at any faster speed than a snail's pace - almost none of whom speak any english, and who stare in blank and silent horror if asked in english about the train schedule; the trains that pull in to the correct platform at the correct time, which some people around you then assure you is your correct train, and then upon further examination, turns out to be headed to Maharastra and would have produced a travel nightmare if you had gotten on; and of course, the eventual understanding and verification from multiple sources that your train is three-and-a-half hours late, and all the last-minute stress has meant nothing....

Epilogue: The Paschim Express to Baroda finally was changed to Platform 4, arriving four hours late and pulled into ITs slow halt followed closely by a few hundred consternated people.... i, too, followed the trail of cars, hoping for a glimpse of my Sleeper 5 car and having seen a descent of Sleeper car numbers pass me by; i lumbered down the line, through the hordes of impatient passengers - Sleeper 9, 8, 7, 6.... Luggage car? And there was the front of the train, not far ahead.... And a kindly soul informed me, no, Sleeper 5 is behind AC class, pantry car, and general admission.... As well as behind H class, B class, and Sleepers 1, 2, 3, and 4.... Aaaall the way at the back of the impossibly long train! Breathing a heavy breath and turning back around, i began my time-sensitive march through the pungent smells of urine and feces all the way back down the platform from whence i had come, and farther.... Much farther....

And so finally, the longest train walk of my life came to a merciful end, all the way at the back, with me installed in the dirty and dusty upper berth # 19, writing these lines lying on my back and needing to poop but lacking the strength to take all of my stuff with me to the bathroom so IT doesn't all get stolen.... :-/

Digging into Kolkata

So here's the backstory:

While we were still in China, i requested, very clearly, to Tiffany that i wished to enter India by myself; i felt that IT was a very important part of my personal journey, and i hoped she would understand and respect my wishes.... She agreed.... And then decided that she wanted to go to India at the exact same time as me; Tiffany then tried to book herself on my flight to India, but pressed the wrong button while booking the ticket and got the plane on the next night after mine (China to Bangkok, Bangkok to Kolkata; her flight to Kolkata wouldn't leave for a week after getting to Thailand, so she could chill on the beach for a bit)! i was pissed off that she was disrespecting my wishes, but relieved that at least we wouldn't be on the same tracks.... We both traveled to Guangzhou to get the Indian visa stuff done, and then chilled in the area for a week to get the visas....

The day before i was going to leave, she got notified from Air Asia that her first flight had been cancelled, and she had been re-scheduled onto MY flight.... i said okay, well at least she's gonna be in Thailand for a week, and i'm moving on, IT's all okay....

Then the day of "our" flight to Bangkok, she was notified by Air Asia that her NEXT flight to Kolkata had been cancelled, and she had two options of planes to re-schedule with: one three weeks after her planned flight, which meant that she would miss having her birthday with our friend Ritodhi in India and miss the awesome wedding he had invited us to in Mumbai; OR.... (you guessed IT).... re-schedule onto my flight.... Which do you think she picked? Now, i asked her to please respect my wishes, and take the later flight, but her birthday plans were important to her, she said, and there was nothing i could do to stop her....

And so there we were that very night, magically together AGAIN on the plane to India....

.... Oh and by the way.... Happy Thanksgiving.... i'm being super-really-grateful for the wonderful friends and family, like Tiffany, i have around me, huh.... Nice, Me

~~~~~

Here's some people met along the way:

Wassim, friendly Vodafone agent who got us back on the 'net, 2G style - met in his Vodaphone outlet in Kolkata

Abdul, Hawai'ian-shirted cool guy, born in India but moved early on and lived in London for 40 years, newly back in India and doesn't like IT much, has girlfriend named Tiffany back in London - met as he walked by us sitting on Park Street corner in Kolkata

Arjun, excellent friend who chefs at the Park Hotel and enjoys life in Kolkata these days, told us about Johnny Depp filming "Shantaram" in Mumbai - met as he was walking home from work up Park Street in Kolkata

Prithvi, friendly little Kolkatan guy who loves to connect folks through Couchsurfing - met through Kolkata Couchsearch

Anneke, strikingly cute Clark-Kent-type German bass/guitar playing chick, was pro for a few years in Berlin but not a for-real player - met through Prithri and CS in Kolkata

Claudia, loveable glassesed Austrian chick with quite the spirit on her - met through Prithri and CS in Kolkata

Azmat Khan, sweet Bangladeshi guy who enjoys hanging out, and warmly invited us to come visit with him in Dhaka - met through Prithri and CS in Kolkata

~~~~~

Chaplin Square! A tribute to Charlie Chaplin in the form of a giant bowler hat over the gateway to an electrical power substation.... What do these things have to do with each other? Who knows? Who cares?

Slice of India: Man pulling rickshaw through Sudder Street, carrying two young men AND their two goats; the goats are clearly enjoying the royal treatment

Slice of India: Down on the Kolkata Metro, a skinny superfab guy with sunglasses straight out of some men's fashion mag, and his completely-black-outfitted face-covered girlfriend, with arms around each other's waists and looking so glam.... and so religious

~~~~~

Rikh Mukerjee, awesome solid Bob Dylan-lovin' guy from Kolkata, loves China and photography (and is really quite a hot photographer!) - met at the Park Hotel poolside bar through Couchsurfing in Kolkata

Sanjay Paul, local CS Abassador in Kolkata, lived in Georgia in the US for a while, very on-point and interested guy.... Oh, and don't forget his "Hobner" guitar, made in May of '93, restrung and played by me at two Couchsurfing Meetups in Kolkata.... So nice to play a real guitar again! - met through Rikh at the Park Hotel poolside bar in Kolkata

Ratnesh, fun CS guy, brought us all back to his place for games of Taboo and Mafia - met at the CS party at Domino's Pizza in Kolkata

Dan Tasse, real-life glassesed good guy from Cleveland, ready to help! - met at the CS party at Domino's Pizza in Kolkata

Anjan, tall gawky "Heil Hitler" guy, awkward but well-meaning - met at the CS party at Domino's Pizza in Kolkata

Alana, dark hair/skinned beautiful girl originally from Colorado Springs, moved to DC for school, a natural winner at Taboo - met at the CS party at Domino's Pizza in Kolkata

~~~~~

"Stupiest" - Anneke's word

"Just as the sun's light does not become different when IT goes into different homes, in the same way, [ITs] great spirit does not become different when IT enters other living beings." - Munshi Premchand

Wow, still awake at 4:44 AM, while i download the text of Manly P. Hall's "The Secret Teachings Of All Ages" onto my phone, while some dude down the hall in our Hotel Afraa retches and pukes over and over and over again.... This is one loooong night

Chirag, nice and sweet dude, glassesed and cleanshaven, from CS Meetup @ Cafe Coffee Day

Maggie Van Cantfort, game and sincere girl-lady who's fun to hang out with, almost shared our first taxi in India together - met on our arrival into Kolkata airport

Parminder, wonderful pompadour sweet guy from CS, freelance film guy who also does work lining up musicians and creating film scores - met at the CS Meetup in Kolkata

We also met Rajasri (Tinni) Mukhopadhyay at the same CS Meetup, who is a wonderful bright artsy countercultural art historian lady, working with The Asiatic Society, and married to Supriyo Sen, the acclaimed documentary filmmaker who made "Way Back Home", which won the National Award and the BBC Audience award for Best Doc (check out www.supriyosen.com); both these lovely folks (and their beautiful little son Megh) wound up being some of our best friends that we've met so far on our travels! They are very liberal, free-thinking people, and really appreciate meeting the same sort of hippie artistic intellects in myself and Tiffany.... Friends for life! :-)

~~~~~

Pigeon shit! Again and again.... Luck for the German and Austrian girls in Kolkata....?

Quite a fun night of art, thanks to Tinni, here at the Center For Indian Modern Art (CIMA Gallery), for the opening night of "Adbhutam - Rasa In Indian Art" exhibition....
Gravid? Lambent? God i gotta love art gallery descriptive blurbs for displayed pieces! Inchoate?
"....Mythologized in his creative crucible...."? Really?
"Is this, then, a futuristic fable of insidious lull, pretending to be a modern landscape?" Geez....
"His environmental conscience leads Suresh K. Nair beyond the anthropocentric focus of humanism in his homage to the cow." Oh sure....
"Is IT an encounter with extra-terrestrial forces? Or a mushroom cloud blooming with radioactive particles? Or a memorial to violence, with the severed heads of smart alecs?" Right on....

"No never don't they say,
Yes i can and will,
i'll fly above the tangled mess,
On a soaring bird of will"

- Collaged poem that Maggie liked from CIMA

Another good suggestion from Tinni brought us to see Tan Moy and "Baul And Beyond" at The OAT (Open-Air Theater, a.k.a. Nazrul Manch), for a almost-wonderful Indian traditional/rock fusion concert! Fun band.... but what a shit mix! You just don't want that much reverb on a giant fifteen-person band with a bunch of trad drums.... i had to restrain mself SO HARD from going up behind the incompetent sound guy at the big giant board and tweaking things to fix the issues; IT would have just been so wrong to do that, but would have produced such a right effect....!

"This has deep metaphysical percussions in Heaven, Hell, AND Earth." - Ritodhi

Mitashi, awesome beautiful friend of Ritodhi's who is into him from school, living in Hartford CT for work - met for lunch in Kolkata

"Why would you have strip clubs in a country that doesn't believe in clothes?" - Ritodhi

"i have problems for your solutions" - Kolkata t-shirt

"Life sends up in blades of grass ITs silent hymn of praise to the unnamed light." - Kolkata park sign

Bharat, older Groucho-looking owner of Earthcare books, one of the best specialty bookstores i've ever entered, with hand-picked hard-to-get titles spanning pretty much every aspect of environmentalism, agriculture, horticulture, Permaculture, and the natural world - met behind the desk at Earthcare Books

"The Observant Owl" by Kaliprasanna Sinha, well-written satirical on old-school 1800's Kolkata, one of Rikh's favorites - read this shit!

Mitul, cool guy who loves Dylan and has his three favorite Sagittarean music people (Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Clapton's teacher John Mayall) - met at the small Earthcare Bookshop's music concert upstairs in Kolkata

A wonderful little evening of music at the Earthcare Bookshop in Kolkata; flute and tabla classical stuff for a while, me playing my stuff on my little silly axe, and music from a good accordion player named Erich from Germany, who plays with passion and gusto, who played his songs about working in a hiking hut in Germany, and his quest to find the Bangalori singer on a random cassette!

Somir, cool dorky soft-spoken glassesed organic farm guy who's trying to abolish the money system (on a small scale) and wants to open a fair-trade handicrafts shop in his Kolkata suburb where his urban organic farm is - met at the Earthcare Bookshop in Kolkata

Vicky, longhair cool rock and film dude with lots of friends i should meet - met at the small Earthcare Bookshop's music concert upstairs in Kolkata

Uperajita, cool & beautiful Kolkata lady who lived in the US for a while and is fully in support of Occupy - met at the small Earthcare Bookshop's music concert upstairs in Kolkata

~~~~~

Five days of staying on Sudder Street, paying too much rupee for a windowless cell of a roach hotel room was five days too many, and our forays into the world of Kolkata Couchsurfing brought us a way out into the greater world of Kolkata, and a true CS gem: Akhilesh Gurung and his band of cousin-brothers from Kalimpong in the mountains of northern West Bengal, who just made a CS account a few days before and wound up having us living in their place for over a week as their first-ever couchsurfers! Akhilesh is a philosopher trapped in a 9-5 corporate job system, who only wants to play guitar and travel around the world, and we all hit IT off immediately....

Our awesome Dudey Dude Couchsurfing housemates: Akilesh, our solid suuuuper-cool guitar-playing host guy; Bubesh (M.C. B), the rap superstar of the house and the only guy getting laid out of the bunch; Yugo, basketball-loving Playstation-playing sweet kid with the same birthday as Tiffany; Ranjay, super-sweet-souled son of Aki's dad's eldest brother who reminds me of Josh Epstein; and Jhoti, under-chin bearded freaky friend of the family.... All these guys (and more all the time! A seemingly endless army of friends) seemed truly delighted to have me rock Aki's Pluto acoustic (which was a pleasure to play, after so long of the Backpacker) all night long, so much so that they didn't seem to mind me and Tiffany taking over one of the three bedrooms.... They actually seemed quite content to pass out on the padded floor in front of the Playstation every night, and had a completely communal system of room-sharing set in place anyway, where each bedroom belonged to whoever fell asleep in IT on a given night.... They cook each other food, and care for each other like brothers, including Aki (who is the oldest at 26) having to scold the others for not going to class enough, as they are supposed to be in college; however, many of their classes are taught in Hindi, and since Nepali (and somewhat english) are their main languages, they find IT impossible to understand their professors most of the time, and wind up skipping classes to sit around playing Playstation.... Aki tries to keep them motivated, but IT's somewhat an uphill battle, and he succumbs to some Old Monk rum and Playstation himself, after getting off his soul-sucking corporate work at midnight.... Living in the Bro's Hideout at 107 Bickramgarh in Jadavpur, near Tollygunge in south Kolkata, was the closest that i've felt to being back in Folsom House since i left on these travels, and IT is heartwarming to know that we are welcome there anytime for the rest of our lives....

Wow all these crazy dreams about India which i can't really remember clearly, which completely twisted right at the end to a badass "Dukes Of Hazzard"-styled guitar called the "General Lee".... i'm not much for Southern Chic, but that was on gleaming badass guitar, with the skull inlay on the lower neck.... Plus earlier, Alex Henry, in Trinity School helping me out with the squat place while i'm sleeping homeless out on the street between Columbus and Amsterdam; i think i was invited into the school afterwards to do something with the kids, or maybe to study as a student? IT was a little sketch for the faculty because i was just some homeless guy, but IT was all going to turn out okay.... Alex and i were going to play guitars together, i remember.... i was excited because we were gonna play "Hippie Chick" with the full bridge.... IT's the American-themed stuff that i can remember, naturally, and all the India stuff just slips through the fingers of my memory as i awake....

Well, the Dalai Lama giving the Kalachakra blessing in Bodh Gaya on Christmas Day this month seems like a truly wonderful experience! Tiffany is set on being there, and maybe that will be okay.... :-/

The Holy Floatel.... The only floating hotel on the sacred Hooghly (Ganges) River!

Thanks to Tinni and Supriyo once again, we got to enjoy Slow Joe & The Ginger Accident, live and onstage.... This unforgettable band of young French classic-rock guys features one creaky old Indian dude, "Slow Joe", who sings in a stylized 1940's crooner-oevre while dancing as though he'd had his skeleton replaced with golf clubs, thrusting his pelvis back and forth in a jerky and unsexy manner to the 60's-San-Francisco-Sound music that the white-boy backup band churns out.... Quite the night

T.W. Watters translation "Travels of Yuan Chuang", Tinni says read! Chinese Buddhist monk coming to India, 629 - 645 AD

Communist Concubines!

"Kalighat Fetish" - Rajasri's professor friend in the states's film about the goat sacrifices

Santiniketan, Open-air school-place for music & spirituality, founded by Tagore - Aaro Aakash, the Non-resort nearby - Bolpur, train stop near Kolkata.... Go there sometime!

- Well, i've officially made my latest dumb move, which occured after walking into Aki's local guitar shop here in Tollygunge....

In amongst all the other regular nice Les Paul knockoffs and whatnot on the walls, there was this one axe standing out like a big yellow sore thumb.... i walked over, and saw neck-through! i started to get a little interested, and picked IT up off the wallmount - and IT was fucking heavy! Yes, i thought! Yes! i examined the odd thing a little more; there was some pretty inlay on the neck, a Spartan warrior on the headstock along with the name Harvey (?), and yes, locking crap instead of a nut with the stupid whammy fine-tuner bridge (engraved with the words "Licensed Under Floyd Ros Pats.").... There were three humbuckers with the plastic still on them, an engaving on the headstock back saying "Made In Korea", and a couple of dings here and there....

We had made plans to go meet Tinni, so i came back to the shop later and played IT (after waiting for them to change strings, fiddling around with the locking bridge and locking tuners, etc.).... IT felt and sounded pretty good, even though the locks weren't on the "nut" (which was held in with screws, ugh) and the thing didn't hold tune super well; still, IT held well enough.... So.... i bought IT for like $200.... even though all the components and wiring, i'm sure, were crap.... The thing is, though, i think the body's really solid, and good for my taste and my preferences (another cheap workingman's Alembic!), and with a little love and a few coil-tapped Seymour Duncan pickups, i think this thing could be very serviceable and maybe even sound good! The guy said IT was a custom job from Korea; i don't know about all that, but IT certainly seems solid, and i can't find "Harvey Guitars" anywhere on the net....

So! IT's sitting at Tinni and Supriyo's place in Kolkata near the Kalighat Lake Market, along with the little tinny green-leather crap-amp they threw in for free, just waiting for me to come back and love IT some more.... i'm seriously thinking about mailing this sucker back home to Paul for some tender loving? i'd have to pack IT up real good and maybe IT would survive the long journey overseas....

~~~~~

.... IT's interesting about the belief thing; i had a good philosophical converstion the other night with our Couchsurf host-buddy Aki, which included a part on talking about belief and what role (if any) IT functionally plays in all of our lives.... Devon's phrase in his email about "believing in the instrument" (concerning my belief in the potential upside of the new Harvey guitar) opened up another thought-path for me.... If we see the potential in something or someone, usually we call IT potential because IT's something that's not being manifested right at the moment; but IT's something we can see existing there even before IT's there, a glimpse into a possible future which might grow into reality if nurtured and coaxed into the "proper" paths.... If we're going to "believe in" that potential reality, and try to aid in ITs existence, we have to go through a motion of relationship with something that technically doesn't exist.... at the moment.... and this thing we call "belief" is actually descriptive of this sort of relationship with the non-existent, which is sometimes the only way to manifest one's desired realities....

i always say, "i don't believe that i have to go to the bathroom; IT's just something that happens!" Which is usually my argument for the non-necessity of "belief" in our lives - meaning that the things which are really important and affect us in our lives have no belief attached to them at all! Which is, in my mind, simply a truism.... Yet, then, what about the other side of the coin? What is up with attention to, and relationship with, things which are NOT immediately apparent and DON'T seem to have any effect upon our present experience? "Sounds crazy, no? But here in our little village of Anatevka, you might say that every one of us is a fiddler on the roof!" Maybe "believing in the instrument" is a more important activity than i've been giving philosophical credit for....! Because i KNOW that i feel very strongly from time to time about giving a lot of my time and energy to something that i know is only potential at the moment.... and i'm happy to do IT! So maybe the deal is that we "believe", when we "believe" that our "belief" will be most useful and helpful to the manifestation of our most desired realities.... Seems sort of crudely simple, now that i read what i just wrote, but still a far jump from where i've been hanging out with "belief" as a useless endeavor of illusion with no practical value....

~~~~~

After two weeks of just beginning to get to know Kolkata, we are heading out from Howrah Train Station towards Ritodhi's friend's wedding in Mumbai.... A train ticket across the entire country costs the equivalent of $10 US.... Unreal!

An amazing sunset, peach-and-pink behind the nearby small blue mountains, with marshes and tropical trees in the foreground, as i watched from the open door of the Gitanjali Express train heading to Mumbai with the wind whipping past.... i feel that there is magic in this land, maybe of a sort that i will be able to see clearly.... There is magic here.... and people living in tent villages

Arup Kumar Roy, little older bald ex-Civil Service kind-hearted man from way-east India, has good ideas on the world's iniquities and how they should be fixed - met as the sun set on the train to Mumbai

.... India

India

- Madness; Imprisonment; Total and utter acceptance

Sam Mitchell is dead

After a ragged night of sleep on the Bangkok airport floor under the endless fluorescent lights, Tiffany and i blearily loaded onto our morning plane and within a few hours, our Chinese reality which had become our standard for several months melted away with the first sight of jagged palm leaves lining the airport runway, and the first inklings that our world was shifting into a great Indian unknown....

From the very first ATM transaction outside the Kolkata airport to the very first taxi ride into the middle of town, IT became clear that things were just.... a little different here.... Everything was a little dustier, a little dirtier, a little grittier; the cabs were all giant yellow rattletraps that looked straight out of the 1940's, and the cabbies were savvy and relentless in trying to squeeze every last rupee out of their helpless fares.... We discovered that the bus into the city center would cost 150 rupees, but where to catch the bus? No one seemed to be able to agree on the exact location, and the smiling cabbies were right there, with their yellow jalopies, crowding around us and demanding 400 rupees into town.... What could we do? Into the cab we went, and towards the mad, mad world of Kolkata we headed.... AT TOP SPEED! With little or no regard for lanes, traffic laws, speed limits, or general safety! Our eyes wide with fear and our mouths hanging open, all we could do was sit tight as we were flung about like stringless puppets in the backseat, praying to whatever little gods were on the driver's dashboard that we would exit the cab alive at the end of this insanity.... After a while, Tiffany began to laugh, even as we screamed past rickshaws and bicyclists with inches to spare on either side; "IT's just like Mario Cart!", she squealed! And after a while, IT did indeed dawn on me that the driver actually was doing a really good job, albeIT in a pirate-driving manner that put all the crack-headed drivers we had encountered in China to shame....

The buildings began to be spaced closer and closer together, and the streets began to look grimier and the people more harried, and IT was when we passed a dirty old building with a sign out front saying "Hospital", but looking like a dilapidated Harlem smack-house, that i realized that we were in for some seriously alternative lifestyle.... i felt somewhat familiar with poverty and ghetto life from living so many years of my life in my hometown of New York City; but everything we were seeing so far in Kolkata was serious, serious ghetto out the windows of this cab, with no end in sight, and the faces of many, many people who were etched with the strains of life in the sprawling ghetto called Kolkata....

Finally, the cabbie stopped amid a terrible chorus of car horns on all sides, and directed us to walk down a particular street, assuring us in broken english that Sudder Street (our destination, such as IT was) was down that way somewhere.... We left the cab all in one piece, amazingly, and wandered down the random street with no map, no info, our big tourist packs all but whooping out "Hey! Here's a couple of newbies fresh off the plane!".... After walking for a while, and asking a couple of random people for directions, we lumbered into the infamous Sudder Street area, where backpackers just like us were supposed to come to shack up all together like nervous fraternitous white folk tend to do.... We were immediately led by a little grizzly potbellied tout up some stairs into the Hotel Afraa, "The Right Place To Stay", where we haggled the dour man behind the counter down to a price of 400 rupees a night for a windowless box reminiscent of a jail cell, complete with cockroaches big as my finger and a cold water shower.... We had no small bills or coins for our tout's "bakshish", and so he vanished in a little disappointed pout....

~~~~~

Tiffany and i had been living in the squalor and clamor of Sudder Street for two days, trying to maneuver the overwhelming shock of poverty and scammerry we had thrust ourselves into by choosing to find quarters in the official tourist ghetto of greater Kolkata; the mad bustle never seemed to stop, with the horns blaring in our ears and the open empty hands thrust into our faces even past the midnight hour.... While taking a respite inside a ramshackle internet cafe, i received a welcome call from Ritodhi, our first genuine friendly contact since arriving in India, and before i could even launch into a string of stories and harangues about our many difficulties in adapting to our new environment, Ritodhi stopped me cold by saying, "Dude! Sam Mitchell is DEAD!"

He was allegedly found on the 16th of November in a Sudder Street hotel room here in Kolkata with a bunch of heroin, whiskey, pharmies, viagra, and cash still present in the room.... The cops "ruled out foul play".... The American Embassy seemed to feel that there was more to the story than the Indian press was describing, but no serious investigation took place.... Did he simply go on his last binge? Did the mild and talkative professor get mixed up with some people he shouldn't have? On Sudder Street, shady characters are a dime-a-dozen, and getting mixed up in their business is as easy as saying, "yes".... We may never know the true details of his last days in India, and all we have left is the shock of his passing, and the zest of his life....

i feel really fucked up about this

Ritodhi and i only knew him for a few days in the town of Shaxi, but our time together was very meaningful.... He seemed to have more stimulation and more fun talking about India with Ritodhi and doing music with me than he may have had in a long time before.... And i appreciated how much fun he was having, and was so very happy to be able to provide such fun and entertainment for him....

He went to Kolkata for a week on a random whim from his meeting with Ritodhi and becoming inspired to study and check out some stuff on which Ritodhi schooled him; he was also very interested in consulting with Ritodhi's historian grandmother about translating some ancient inscriptions that required the work of an expert.... And the truth is, if he hadn't met us in Shaxi, he wouldn't have come to India for that week.... He was so excited

i really loved him, through all his chain-talking and professorial tunnel-vision; he really and truly loved to share knowledge, and was equally as fascinated by listening to, and learning from, Ritodhi as he was interested in telling him scholarly things.... He was very fond of all the kids who came through his classes, and had a soft spot in his heart for the sweetness and sometimes-uptightness of our friend Ashley Oldacre, so much so that he offered her the position of caretaker/cultural liason for he and his wife Yuen's guesthouse and "cultural center" in Shaxi....

He was long-winded and sincere about his love of both India and China, and all the fascinating details which make up the histories of the two oldest living civilizations on Earth; his knowledge was encyclopedic in many areas, from 20th-century American pop music through the relatively short history of the Nanzhao Kingdom in southwestern China.... He could talk all day weaving seamlessly from topic to topic, like a true professor, and though i'm sure that some folks might have tired of his stream-of-consciousness company rather quickly, i found him both fascinating and informative, with a willingness to share a storehouse of information that most people could never imagine stashing away....

His generosity in sharing knowledge will not soon be lost on me; neither so his infectious love for life, and boundless curiosity for all things both academic and bizarre! But in the wake of my shock surrounding his passing, and the terrible manner in which he passed, the surroundings of Sudder Street became a little more somber.... a little dirtier.... a little more tragic....

When i met Sam for those few days in Shaxi, he was definitely shaky, and confided to us as he got to know us better that he had some serious health problems that had been greatly exacerbated by his indulgence in alcohol and other substances; he sad that he had cleaned up completely, and was now "98% sober", but that life just wouldn't be worth IT without a little 2% of fun now and again....

i only know my gut feelings; when we parted ways in China, Sam was very encouraging to me about my intended visit to India, and he was very inspired by his scholarly talks with Ritodhi about Indian history and philosophy, especially when he learned that Ritodhi's grandmother is a specialist in translating ancient Sanskrit-specific scripts, for he had long needed help with translating specialized inscriptions on stone tablets in the Dali area.... His inspiration was so high that he spontaneously decided to book a ticket for Kolkata right then, saying that he had a few weeks open right then when he had no prior engagements, he hadn't been back to India for several years, and IT was a great time for a ten-day trip to study more on all this new food-for-thought he had gotten from his time with Ritodhi! He was so happy, and i was so happy for him that he was going on a little adventure with a lot of new study material and work to be done! Educational journeying was clearly a huge love in his life, and i was super-psyched that we had helped inspire him to get out there and do some more of IT!

i actually asked him if, since i was considering going to India soon myself, if i could maybe go at the same time as him and tag along.... And he said yeah sure, but after a night of self-reflection, i decided that i needed to go into India by myself, as a journey of self-discovery, and said so to Sam the next morning; he was very happy that i had made that decision, saying that he was proud of me for taking that step of personal bravery.... In addition, i also discovered that the Indian visa process in China was longer than i thought IT would be (no visa office in Yunnan), and i would have to go to Guangzhou and spend another three weeks getting IT all done, during which time Sam was already in India.... So IT couldn't all have happened any other way, but IT's tough to think that if i COULD have made IT work, Sam might still be around.... One of those things....

The man i knew who was going to India for ten days was NOT a man who was trying to go there for some kind of bender-binge; he was very happy and serious, with clear goals and studying to do, and looking forward to the satisfaction of new knowledge to be learned.... That energy just doesn't match up with the "facts" surrounding his passing; i don't know how to reconcile all these things, but i have had to stop trying to do so, and try to let IT go, and love my time with Sam and appreciate the gifts that he has given me in the time that we knew each other....

Part of me wanted to go out and make my own private investigation into the matter, since i didn't know who else would (and IT's entirely possible no one ever will).... And part of me wanted to let IT all go and let the past be the past....

So with a slew of unanswered questions and a jarred and shaken psyche, back out into IT i went, to try and piece together the patchwork tatter of life on Sudder Street in Kolkata, to figure out how to be "white and privileged" in such a sea of destitution, and how Tiffany and i could learn to live with ourselves as we helplessly walked by the shuddering faces of humans in need....