www.solbeam.com

For those of you worried, please don’t.

Writing, meditating, metaphor-chasing, psychoanalyzing – they are my ways of unwinding a tangled life. Yet my life hasn’t many knots in it these days. It’s blissfully simple. I used to love to pull out my tarot cards and do a quick reading. My eyes still occasionally fall upon the deck, but I flinch at the old adventures of digging into the past, etching at the future, and scratching for the surreal. My eyes flee from the deck as they do most things that threaten to steal me from the surprises of the present moment.

This is the happiest year of my existence – possibly my life. I’m certain there are knots and tangles ahead. And I’ll save all my trusty means of metaphor-seeking for assistance through those inevitable life trials and travels. For now, I’m resting in the shade of the tree I myself planted. For in the front of every travel journal I ever took abroad, starting with the first I took to Guatemala now nine years ago, I printed the following poem by Kahlil Gibran….

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

I’ll be on the road again soon, with upcoming adventures in India, Indonesia, and possibly Cambodia. And I have a new camera to find and tell more stories. I’ll be gone for longer than I’m comfortable, but I wake every morning and take account of the blessings in my life that allow for me to be so delicately stretched (not severed) between two worlds and loves.

A few recent stories from the “stitch” of my new Sony Alpha Nex-5…

My boyfriend built me a spice rack this weekend.

Not just your standard turntable or ledge, but a triple-deck vertical tower on tracks that slide cooking arsenal right into the casual reach of your left hand while the right, at the same time, can conveniently keep stirring, chopping, firing or flipping.

It’s beautiful. And at first glance my sentimental pinch was the memory of moving into this house: As a fitting right of passage, we spent the first three days touching every ledge, every corner, every sill and unfortunately even some spots on the floor of our new old house – with a fresh coat of paint. And on the fourth day, I opened up our empty cupboards and decided it was time to go to the market.

The spice isle – however, is no place for budgets. Especially for a girl who always opts organic. And as I held the pretty glass bottles in my hands while coveting the entire shelf – I irresponsibly decided it was worth the purchase on credit and impulsively selected my top seven. For some girls it’s shoes. For me, it’s spices. When I got home, I proudly lined the seven glass bottles up on a bare shelf. While they indeed, looked rather lonely, I was totally content. And I swatted away the day-dreamed vision of a one-day full shelf — it was simply too far into an unseen future to try to squint at.

“Look babe!” he shouts. And he has chosen the right girl for his heart, for I swoon for the sliding piece of art that he demonstrates. Our eyes meet, and no discussion is needed, as we both reach for the old shelf that once held only seven. As he begins grabbing fists full of clanking green, yellow and orange glass bottles – and hands them down to me – we begin lining them up according to favorites and frequency of use. The rack quickly fills and we’re left, still, with a pile on the ground. Doubles! And time and money hidden in the recesses of overlooked excess. Oh well. We store the duplicates back into the cupboard where they can wait their time and then turn our attention to marvel at our, now complete, creation.

My guy, ever the artist, is always more interested in the process than the result – and his ADD quickly moves him elsewhere. Yet I continue standing stalled in wonder. And suddenly I realize that I am overwhelmed with an enormous amount of emotion. Too much for a simple spice rack! Am I overlooking something here?

And so I look closer…

First, there is always garlic; number one on the shelf in its sea-rock-salt and organic cilantro variation. And I remember when I actually peeled my first garlic bulb, in Guatemala – where I learned the trick to the proper heat in Guacamole comes not from pepper, but three crushed cloves for every one avocado. (And don’t you dare forget to leave the seed in the spread to keep it from going brown.) Since then I have never less than tripled the call for cloves in any and every recipe calling for the ingredient. I also remember my Ladahki Himalayan guide, Rigzin-ji, offering me a raw slice to keep the parasites at bay and health as high as the attitude to which we were escalating. We’d chew fast, swallow whole, and snicker as our student group ducked from the aim of our laughing fire. And then there is also the day this summer that one of my best friends and I spent working at our local CSA; digging up the bulbs planted nine months prior – and giving good but ugly attempts at braiding their soft stems into something to catch the eye of shoppers at the farmers market.

Ginger, in its powdered form, is intentionally neglected. But I remember my first root – at a Buddhist retreat center, where hot ginger lemon tea was the only distraction allowed from the observance of our minds. What a holy relief it was – to marvel in the human luxury of taste, when your brain was put to the task of judging everything else equanimous. To Ginger, I will always be indebted.

Basil, a bottle also growing old in un-use. Basil was my first window-sill herb; a single plant, picked up totally on whim, as I was leaving the grocery store about five years ago. I put the tiny stem with only a few leaves in the sun of my kitchen window. And I could not believe, that ALL it wanted of me was a little water and that sunny sill. In return, I could pull off a leaf or (even) two a day – to toss in my omelet, sandwich or salad. When I left for India – I called my best friend and asked for her to pick it up and love it like I had. When she confessed, a year later, that she had forgotten to get it when I left, and picked it up, weeks later, dead – I almost punched her in the face and then fought the urge to cry. Who knew that such a tiny plant could become my “giving tree” of the famous storybook? And I am still grateful, for the seed of love that basil plant sowed in me, which has since, grown into the greenhouse and window sills now hosting, among much more, 4th generation basil grandchildren.

Cinnamon. For the purpose of how many teas and stews, from Senegal to India, have I used motar and pestle to crush these spicy, sweet sticks as the offhanded task by host mothers trying to keep me busy while they chatted off my ear in languages I was struggling to grasp? The slow building of these rock-relationships warmed me even more than the hot tea.

Braggs. Okay. Not a spice. But an amino acid quite directly attached to the six months of my life devoted to the political, health, environmental and spiritual experience and study of Veganism. It was living in the Planet Drum volunteer house, on the coast of Ecuador – where I smashed cacao fruit seeds into the paste of vegan chocolate and learned the delicious joys of Brewers yeast, Braggs and the other best friends of all vegans and the uber food conscious.

Toasted sesame oil. Which to me is exactly the taste of my short English teaching stint in South Korea. Which leads me down the trail of a fail-less giggle, in the memory of an assigned task to a group of 6th graders to draw their favorite food – and them each, in a row, standing up and proudly demonstrating the unanimous favorite: the fermented red cabbage, Kim Chi.

A bottle of bay leaves; a single one remaining – that will soon, like the others, be tossed into an Indian stew in the pressure cooker – whose screaming hissing used to send me running to the far edge of kitchens. Now, with Indian second nature, I confidently tap with my wooden spoon to release the steam while sending our dogs and cats into retreats under beds and outdoors.

Lemongrass. Occasionally put into a green or yellow curry – but let’s face it: Thai food in Thailand can simply never be replicated. And then there is the lemongrass tea that I will always remember as the drink of my desert. After spending 12 hours wandering with the spirits in the sacred Vilcabamba Valley on the cactus juice of San Pedro — being parched from having traveled the life cycle of a water droplet till the shaman chanted and dropped a sunrise of lucidity back upon earthly life — it was lemon grass tea that brought the grass back under my feet.

Turmeric. More medicine (in India) than spice, healing the joint pains of a sister, but whose miracles I haven’t yet directly discovered myself aside from the flavor of my lentils and the yellow stain on my cutting boards, finger nails and unluckier items of clothing marking the memory of house-warming dinners past.

Rosemary. Poor rosemary. Our first plant was sacrificed to the spider mites – before we looked closely enough to realize that you don’t have to be big to have bite. Poor rosemary sits, now, composting over my wooden gate – while another, started from seed, took a slow three months to sprout and still doesn’t look overly eager for the task of growing. In the meantime, a glass bottle of delicious needles tends to our sweet potato root roasts while we patiently await your eventual maturity into a season of giving.

Cayenne pepper. We tend to abuse you on our attempts at Thai. And then there is our pepper plant, upon which now hangs at least 50 peppers in shades of green, purple and red. Yet remaining a dangerous mystery is your hierarchy: who is more powerful, the 4 inch green ones? Or the 1-inch red ones? Or the 2-inch purple ones? Showing no consistency would, now that I think about, be quite in line with the character of this fiery-tempered plant. So we use the glass bottle when we don’t want surprises and we pull from the plant if we’ve already had a glass of wine or two.

Pepper-All Seasoning: this is the Mac & Cheese of my spices; the ultimate in comfort food! Stolen directly from my Dad’s spice rack – this old standby got me through college on micro-waved potatoes (gross) and still blackens an occasional wild salmon today (delicious). When my dad stocks up – he always does so in multiples of 4 – including one for each of his children for the one that will remain when the rest are stolen from his house.

Mustard seed: I never use. But the rural Indian village to where my mind and body always wander when my most vivid memories are sent to pasture – is one that swims in a sea of yellow mustard fields where we take shade under mango trees while sucking on the stalks of sugar cane. In mustard seeds too, there is, one of my Indian host mothers heating up her pot full of sizzling mustard seed oil, till she tosses in some seeds whose precise cackle tells her if and when it’s ready for the onions. I still don’t speak the language of boiling oil – but will be forever mystified by this Indian woman fluency.

I haven’t yet even spoken of Cumin, Garam Masala, Nutmeg, Pepper, Cardamom, Clove or Cilantro (Oh Cilantro!). But maybe now you see, as I did, how this display of spices put together a storyboard of memories worth a wet eye of appreciation and love for the people and places that have flavored my life.

Amen.

On the “when I settle list” (which I started about 7 years ago), right between the (crossed-off) items of, “window sill herb garden,” and “adopted cat,” I have, “book club.” And, regardless of how domestic the agenda may seem, I’ve got no shame in hosting gatherings of quality people and literature exploring the themes of our lives through the chapters and mirrors of others.

Just wanted to share a few of my favorite titles read in the last few months…..

This is the third time this week that I’ve sat down to write, and then decided.

I’d just rather walk.

Every spiritual guide and clairvoyant I’ve ever encountered has told me this: you live too much in your head. I believe this blog to be evidence of that fact; the ruckus of clambering thoughts channeling through their own medium.

But on my walk, I am left only to listen.

The sound of the creek I know will equally approach me, as I it, at the bend in the road. The rusty-rich waft of decomposing layers of last fall’s leaves, reliably escape through a pocket of collapsing snow, rising to meet me in a vivid reminder of the season past and to come again. There is a story, in the earthy brown eyes of the aspens, that reveals itself only if my imagination is set free to wander. Newly naked bird nests, dolloped each with a foot of fresh powder, shock me with the secrets held from me by the trees of which I walked unaware, each day, under. The missing footprints marking where the heard of elk clearly took flight over the fence. Their musk sending my black lab into a frenzy, from which she returns from circles, with a determined snort of the snow off her black nose. And the only sound that echos, is that of my resulting laughter.

Having spent so many years, neck to neck, and thus in stillness with the speed of the seasons, it is dizzying to have stopped allowing them, now, to wash over me. On my last flight from India, I rebelliously refused to shut my window at the attendant’s kind request. Instead I fogged up the tiny window with the breath of my awe at the continents of land masses, passing quietly beneath me. But I’ve always looked out the window. Why is it different now? An insightful friend chuckled knowingly, “because now you have a home.”

And isn’t that a concept!? That I travelled lightly not for leaving my heavier books and boots, but for having left my sense of home behind! Or perhaps that I rather carried it with me. Some internal locus, which left the compass spinning, not out of control, but rather like a clock. Simply making its way around. Pointing to nothing in particular, evidencing, over time, nothing but a center.

I have a home? I suppose I have a place that comes to me, and not I to it. I have a place in which I’d rather not talk, but listen. I have a finish line with time, in which I’ve quit, and let the colors, visions and scent of seasons blissfully overwhelm me. The needle on my compass now leaves hesitantly, returns eagerly. Hum. Yes. I have a home.

And I have a quiet walk. With a path in whose subtle changes I take immense delight in discovering. Maybe I’ve run out of some words. Maybe I’ve always needed shorter sentences. Maybe my season of listening is simply upon me. There’s a peace in this. And it is welcomed.

Hi friends, sorry for the absence. I’ve, typically, be overloaded with both social and work engagements and now am equally busy back in India again. As my plane rides to India are ever loaded with writing content, I’ve yet only to compose. In the meantime, please accept the following which was in response to the writing prompt: When did you “grow up”?

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At age 22, I was doing a lot of “grown-up” things; putting in 60-hour work weeks, making timely payments on my student loans, securing health insurance benefits, upholding loyal and loving relationships with friends, family and a partner, managing a stock portfolio where I was investing substantial savings, filing my taxes, early, without the help of parents or accountants, and managing the overall and on-time upkeep of a healthy household, body and life. But there were more question marks than periods in my life; not multiple-choice questions, but opened-ended statements reduced to the common denominator of:

I am…

It was a relentless self-inquiry; the blank drawing longer and the question only spinning more furiously with each book I pulled off the metaphysics shelf. Finally I put the books down. Put everything down. Realizing that I would find none of my answers in their conclusions and that these were chapters only I could write.

My parents cringed as I put their interpretation of “growing up” on hold: deferring my student loans, quitting my job, losing my insurances, saying open-ended goodbyes to all those with whom I’d formed attachments, and liquefying all my assets and savings into one chunk of an easy-access cash account. What was left fit easily into my backpack.

As the reader might, I too thought I knew where this was going: six months, a year at the most, following my every whim and fancy, at the end of which I would have found the answer to my question.

Yes. Yes, there were many wooden docks off of lakes and leading into oceans, on which I sat beneath midnight skies and pondered a philosophy that paralleled the blanket of night to my surface experiences, through which only my most minuscule of life understandings had yet penetrated the depths of my unknowns as stars.

No. A year of pondering the darkness was not enough. It’s taken me many years to come to peace with, and self respect, the fact that I am a slow learner. And I may have left my grown-up tasks behind, but I did not leave my sense of responsibility for being thorough. Had I been quicker, perhaps my quest could have been confined to a year or less, but as that was not my nature, my earthbound pilgrimage found itself extending, re-tracing, doubling over, making multiple evolutions around the earth, past a cumulative total of seven years.

I did, however, find and scribble into pages upon pages of my journal, possible conclusions to that open-ended sentence with which I had set forth.

In Latin America – in Guatemala, Spain, Colombia, Honduras, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Brazil and Peru – countries and cultures for which I admire specifically for their heart and heat for passions of the human spirit and connection to pacha mama, or mother earth, I felt confidence and pride in my completion of that sentence with: Seeker. Woman. Dancer. American. Student. Scuba diver. Volunteer. Lover. Writer. Human. Spiritualist. Photographer. Pilgrim. Dreamer. Foreigner. Alchemist. Explorer. Magician.

Yet then I carried that same journal to South Asia – to India, Nepal, Tibet and India (again and again) – countries and cultures whose affinity for cyclical existence and non-attachment, to a merely earthly existence, brought enormous peace in their rational arguments for that which I had always intuitively suspected, but could not lineate into logical sense. And thus I returned to my question, reviewed all that I had contrived to fit under my umbrella of ego, and erased it. And with a huge sigh of relief, I drafted a new conclusion to that sentence: Nothing. Emptiness. Silence. Service to others. One life of many. One cell of a much greater organism. One tiny drop of evolution’s sweat. One miniscule being with the same opportunities, as any other, of taking delight in the chances of witnessing moments of beauty and light, afforded us each, in a mysterious blessing of life.

While these conclusions matured me, I still didn’t feel “grown-up.” Quite the contrary; I felt smaller than ever! But I was content enough with my vague answers to begin the search for my life vocation. “Vocation,” not so much as it is defined as an occupation or profession, but as the term was refined by Frederick Buechner as, “the place where your great gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Of course, my intentions at the time were hardly so eloquently realized, and I believe it was only by divinely-orchestrated chance that I stumbled right upon exactly such a thing. That “thing” was the field of Experiential Education. For those new, as I was, to the term, it means structuring education so as to engage the learner into taking the initiative in the investigation, experimentation, digestion and reflection of direct experiences with the aim of learning natural consequences, mistakes and successes with ownership and authenticity. Logistically, this meant that my new job was taking small groups of teenagers for three-month learning adventures in the developing world: Fiji, Guatemala, Nepal and India.

It was one day, on exactly one of these assignments that something shifted.

We had just arrived, after 27-hours in transit, at the airport in New Delhi, and the disheveled looks of my student group accurately reflected the distance around the world traveled: A girl, who had inadvertently fasted from food for two days in anxiousness, was still white from fainting in the aisle of the plane on the way to the toilet. A boy was slurring run-on sentences in residue of the miscalculation of the timing of sleeping medications prescribed to him for the plane. Still another student had a stack of vomit bags tucked under her arm, of which she’d already used two. The quivering, perspiring, group of overstuffed backpacks, like a line of awkward ducklings, followed my step, too closely and without any awareness outside of the feet in front of them, through the airport. As we filed through the air-conditioned and last reservoir of the First-World familiarity of the international airport, past the heavily armed guards, and out the double doors of the airport’s first line of security, the group was smacked simultaneously with the full force of India’s chocking humidity, shouting taxi driver mob, and dizzyingly dark swarms of mosquitoes.

With a soft and straight pace, I led the group through the crowd and to a clearing in the parking lot. There I directed them each to drop their heavy bags and cinch the circle in until it was safely airtight of the foreign chaos around us. Intentionally modeling a moment of unhurried presence, I slowly made my eye-contact way around the circle, riding the highs and lows of their roller coaster of emotions:

Shock. Elation. Curiosity. Fear. Excitement. Regret. Trepidation. Courage. Confidence. Illness. Disbelief. Awe.

And it was at this moment that I, for the first time, realized that I was elated by their excitement, aghast in their shock, knew their fear intimately, and admired their courage – more than my own.  I also saw their questions; many variations of the same open-ended one that had morphed intp so many continental directions for me. But it was no longer about the answers; theirs or mine. I only saw in each student a unique path that was just as in need of mentorship, as it was well-timed moments of silence.

And something shifted.

It was no longer about my search for meaning and identity. My joy in life and the world’s need met.

I felt I had suddenly stumbled upon a very important clue as to why human beings procreate: for exactly this reality-shifting realization – (and enormous relief!) – that it is simply no longer about me.

Somewhere along that rollercoaster of faces and emotions, I had traversed to the other side and got off my own life’s ride – as  much of an adult as I think I’ll ever grow up to be.

And the, “I am…” trailed from a heavy sigh off into silence:

Content, simply, in its empathetic open-endedness.

Hi friends,

I’ve got a new writing goals check list on my wall that requires that I enter one writing contest a month. This is a tiny one (one paragraph) with a nice prize. Will you please wishlist my trip in the following Trazzler contest and help me win a little trip to Hawaii?

http://www.trazzler.com/trips/caribbean-sea-in-roat-n-islas-de-la-bah-a-hn

Thanks to all!

sol

I push myself up from my writing recliner and drag my finger across a row of travel journals. Tap a finger on my lower lip. Walk over to my work desk and drag the same finger across another row.

Chewed up purple Nepali homemade binding; I angle it out and ponder the hand painted elephant and cow atop each other on the cover. I can’t remember my exact reasoning at the time for choosing the blank pages of this particular yet-unwritten book, but feel now that purple is too chemical a color for my Dolpa memories — which are all strictly scripted in high-altitude grays and blues. And while the experience was as heavy and sacred as the beasts on the cover, at 15,000 feet these animals would be as mythical to those looking down, as we at lower-elevations consider the gods when looking up. No. The choice of journal was all wrong; saying something also of my miscalculated expectations of the journey. The latter, I’m sure, the very reason that I now remember one particular day on that trip as the most reality-quaking of my travels.

It’s for this day that the same finger that dragged across my bookshelf now searches in the tattered purple journal.

I come across a page splattered with large bleeding holes of black ink and the quip, “did you know that pens explode at 14,000 feet?!”

I laugh just as much at the comment itself as at the fact that I had correctly guessed that my future self would find this self-delivered jest, one day, funny.

I scan my thin and weak scribbles and suddenly sympathize with the exhaust evidenced by the simple bullet points that I hadn’t the energy to even expand upon.

I return to the top of the page and see in the corner that I’ve documented only:

June 7th
Santa
11 hours trekking
14,000 feet

I return to the bullet points – some so faint and foreign that I can’t remember the associations of things I clearly thought would burn in my permanent memory so deeply that I’d only need a single term or phrase of prompting. And for those lost associations, I feel a bit of sadness: does a memory cease to exist if it’s not remembered?

Then I read a note that sends my head back in a fit of laughter.

In the bullet-pointed memory, KT, also known as Sangheeta in this story, is looking at me blankly. Her cheeks are scalded red by the high altitude sun and wind. Her face is still covered in dirt from when, at the top of a 15,000 foot pass, a supposed dinn-powered whirlwind attacked her before being chased off with protection mantras and a few well-aimed stones by our Tibetan guide.

It’s with these eyes, black like the bleeding ink of my exploded pen, that KT turns to me after taking slow account of our surroundings:

A little frightened, I touch her arm and tell her, “KT, I just want you to know that this is the most culturally shocking place I have ever witnessed in my 7-years of travel.”

To this, she turns around and shows almost no reaction. Then she scans our surroundings again and comments, “No. I think I’ve seen this before.” She concludes her sentence in straight-faced shock, “on National Geographic.”

It’s the altitude and the exhaust and the absolute absurdity of where we’ve found ourselves that suddenly sends us, with this serious comment, into high-altitude hysterics. Her tears of laughter clear tiny pink streaks down her face and, in a place where there are no mirrors except for the face in front of yours, I am left forever wondering if mine have done the same.

Coming into our shared guestroom with my ears still ringing from the blaring horns and yelling hawkers of busy Kathmandu streets, it echos from the bathroom….

Arms full of groceries, closing the front door of my mountain house with a handy foot, it wafts up to me from the greenhouse…

Wandering into the coffee shop, where she’s scheduled for a Sunday night session, on the very first day where a best-friendship was born, it bounces off the corners of a small room….

On 15,000 foot mountain passes, high and teary eyed with altitude sickness, it reflects off of high altitude desert walls…

Outside of a bus on a broken rural road waiting for a driver who we aren’t sure exists, it lifts a few weary travellers’ spirits…

With tears in her eyes, testifying to the universal truths of hearts, broken or free…

From bathrooms (her favorite sound studio) and greenhouses and coffee houses and mountain homes and passes,

Please enter my world and hear the bathroom echo and voice that never fails to water my eyes with respect, love, empathy and joy….

“Rain ko, Hindi me, kya khati hain?”

He looks at me, awaiting an answer. But I only caught the inflection at the end of the sentence that hinted of a question.

Shoot. He’s asked me a question. But I haven’t any idea what. Not because I don’t know the vocabulary, but because my mind refuses to stay present.

“Maf kijiye Ji. Phirse boliye?”

Ever patient, he replies, “Don’t apologize. It’s okay. Of course, I’ll repeat it again: “Rain ko, Hindi me, kya khati hain?”

“Barish,” I answer confidently.

“Ha,” he says affirming that “barish” in Hindi, means rain.

Weather is often a subject of my Hindi classes and now that the first clouds of the Indian monsoon have arrived, I am forewarned that it will soon be difficult to hear my teacher’s voice when I hear the evening’s first tear-sized drops begin to pang on the metal roof overhanging our outdoor classroom.

He shuffles through our text book looking for the chapter on passive voice, where we left off before our tea break, and I steal the opportunity to return to my prior consuming thought: “Such an emotional letter. He’ll think I’m a nutcase. But maybe I am. And shouldn’t he know if that’s the case? I certainly feel myself one. This isn’t sustainable. How much easier, calmer life was when I had only myself and independent life to think about! A little mental peace; a little confidence of heart and in who I am. How did I lose these things and get so lost in this?”

“…..kya hai?”

Oh no. I’ve done it again already! My teacher, again, is looking at me expectedly. But he also knows.

After a few months of these regular evening sessions, he’s seen my full range of emotions and energy levels. Just as he instinctively knows exactly which clue will jog my memory of the construction of a tense or sentence, I’ve also learned that he always intuitively knows, sometimes better than I do, exactly when and to where my mind wanders.

Knowing my limits, kindly, he offers, “Is it something to do with work? Your students? Your co-leader?”

His eyes are shinning in a way that makes me imagine he offered the first two options just to keep me guessing as to the intuitive powers of which I often accuse him.

I sigh and give in, “I’m so sorry. My mind is just on other matters. You are, as always, right. I guess I’m just still stuck in the last conversation I had with my co-leader….”

“Is it something you’d like to talk about?”

I think back to the room where the conversation took place; to where I was sitting when you said goodbye. When you left, I just sat there, starring at your absence in the doorway for ten minutes. And then suddenly you re-appeared, re-filling that same frame, and I barely had time to realize or believe it before you started, “I went down the stairs and to my bike. And I got on it and started riding down the block, but I just have this feeling that even though you tell me you are okay, and insist that everything is fine, that really, something is bothering you. So I turned my bike around, and here I am. Please tell me if there is something I did, or can do?”

I’m touched by your actions and I feel my eyes well with tears. But I don’t want to cry. And I know if I try to speak, tears will inevitable fall before words. So I protect myself, as I am so accustomed to doing, by white lying: “You are sweet. But really. I am fine. Just fine. Don’t look at me like that. Really! Please go. I have Hindi in an hour and I have to study. I promise you. I’m okay.”

You look around outside the door frame to assure you are free of witnesses, and then you step across the mat on the floor, lean down and place a secret kiss on my forehead, and say, “okay, if you say so.” You then smile somewhat begrudgingly, wish me a happy Hindi class, and disappear out the door. Only when the heavy metal door slams shut, announcing your final departure, do my tears finally escape the physical bond in which I tried to encase them.

A monsoon of tears; unburdening dark and heavy clouds of equally deep and obscured emotions. And as I let them rain down, I feel a tiny fire suddenly lit. And with this fire, yet still under the barrage of unrestrained storm and sentiment, I open up my laptop and start typing. Madly typing. Run-on sentences. Exclamation marks. Question marks in triplicate. I start with my conclusion, build upon no foundation, and end with questions. It’s a tirade; the mindless banter of mental extremes you normally and discretely allow only between you and yourself. But it’s on paper. Or rather in email. And with face flushed by this outburst of sentiments finally, if irrationally, expressed, and with a confidence plucked from the entitlement of my emotional rage, I open up the wireless connections and hit, “SEND.”

Immediately, I put my hands to my hot face and in horror, out loud, stammer, “Oh my God. What have I done?!”

But a quick glance at my watch and I realize I’ll barely have time to speed walk to Hindi class, let alone ponder my stupid, stupid outburst and its inevitable consequences. Inevitable. I hold onto the word, while I gather my belongings and rush out the door with a heavy sigh of retreat and relief. What’s done is done. All I can do now is wait. The rest: inevitable.

While my Hindi teacher is something like the grandfather I never had, with wisdom and gentleness, softened by 60-something years of life learnings and experience, I now look at this loving face and, not out of protection, but honesty, reply softly, “No Ji. It’s not something I want to talk about. But thank you. Just please excuse my behavior this class?”

His eyes smile and he laughs softly. And in this gesture, I know that, just as were he my grandfather, I will always be forgiven. Inventing some made-up excuse on his end, he allows me to end my class early, escorts me to the door, and sees me off with an extra gentle and kind blessing of Namaste.

In the muddy alley of my teacher’s house, cows and goats and puppies have taken shelter, knowing as well as any, from the elevating panging of rooftops, that an equally inevitable storm is impending. Something of a peace comes over me; a mixture of relief and readiness as I look up at the dark skies. I inhale a deep and fresh breath of monsoon air and continue walking, whilst calmly shuffling through my bag for my rain jacket. Hopping puddles at the same time, I finally find my jacket, pull it out, and scout the upcoming intersection for a break in the rickshaw wallahs and homecoming water buffalo through which I regularly navigate the streets.

And there you are.

Leaning against the wall. Like it isn’t raining. Without rain coat or umbrella, but only the softest, and yes — I see it now — sympathetic smile.

My heart falls cushioned as all the noises of India fall silent and the only thing I hear is the rain, which speaks, now, for the two of us. You outstretch a hand, and as mine has already done a thousand times, I accept it. You turn and lead me down the gully, providing me leverage with a strong arm, over the puddles now converging into streams.

We emerge on the final Ghat of the river bank of the most sacred river in India, Ganga-gi. You lead me, still silent, down a few stairs, till we rest hidden in the now black darkness, which conveniently hides an otherwise culturally unpermitted sign of affection. You wrap me in your arms and we look out over the water where lightning, like God-sized and golden cymbals, is clashing against its own reflection.

You then turn me around, and say, “I had a feeling. And I got your email.”

I immediately open my mouth to issue excuses, denials, explanations….

But you stop me before I start, and continue, “I don’t always understand you…”

At this confession, a tear escapes.

With a gentle finger, you brush my tear away, “Let me continue; I don’t always understand you. But it doesn’t matter. Things will come and pass. I don’t have to understand everything you fear or feel. I only want you to know, how much I care for you, that I’ll always be here for you,”

You glance out to Ganga-ji, our only and silent witness to this first and final declaration,

With a soft hand still at my cheek…

“and that I love you.”

Into tears and arms I fully melt.

The declaration I return to you has no hesitation. It started, an unknown time ago, as a whisper in my head — at the end of each sentence, thought or parting glimpse. As paragraphs, chapters of our time together, wound on, that voice like a ball of string grew larger, longer. The low and continuous chanting of the mantra had not far to leap, from thought to speak, and less like words, my declaration to you is returned like the lightning’s reflection of itself on water.

It’s a love story.

A non-fictional one in which I re-live the depth of emotion, romance, commitment and unconditional love in that moment, every day. It’s personal, and maybe the most important story in my life; of course I had to write it. As every love story I’ve ever read, in some way contributed to mine, so let this one contribute to others.

As for you. 1 year, 7 months, 14 days and thousands of daily declarations later, I find myself exactly as many layers deeper in love with you. And when I return to Ganga-ji, next week, I will report to her of the thousand ways in which you’ve held true to your declaration made in her presence. And eyes closed, bowed low, I will thank her, for the countless blessings on that monsoon night, which she so benevolently showered upon us.