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For the third time in a year, I’m in India. I feel ourselves in something of a desperate love affair; one, and just as often the other, on her knees, begging the other to come back, just go, or not leave.

Four months ago, in a dizzy spell in Delhi, I realized that my eyes no longer wandered. That in terms of travels, I’d become blinded by my loyalty and love for only one city: and nothing less than the, “oldest continually inhabited in the world”: Varanasi. This devotion I scribbled into a journal, confessed to a best friend, put the contract on my heart in fact and pen. Twenty-four hours later, an email arrived under the subject title, “when direction finds you” and in it, a job with outstretched hand and ring, proposing to marry all my passion-trodden directions, at the crossroads of my favorite city. Yes. The very same. Varanasi.

So here I am again. Hindi finally finding a more confident, or at least playful, place on my tongue. Swooping wide circles around the bull whose horns I know to catch those walking unaware and pull them, with a flash of adrenaline, to the present. Identifying which ghat I walk on by the very same cesspool I remember hop-scotching even five years ago. Waving hellos and bowing namastes to the shop-keepers, rickshaw-wallas, and restaurant owners, who no longer need to scratch heads long, before finding my name. My Hindi teacher, he knows exactly when I need the umph of chai to push me through the end of class. My host family, they know that my task list is endlessly long and that I’ll fall asleep on their bed once the Bollywood flick trespasses nine. The restaurants, they specially serve me the dishes no longer on their menus but still on mine.

And just as much as Banaras remembers me, I remember it. From the mantras chanting from loud speakers in devotion to the Ganga-ji, to the orange globe of India’s ever dusty sun. From the yappy white dogs with red tikkas on their foreheads to the smell of detol and scream of wedding speaker bollywood beats. On every corner, a principle of non-dualism in demonstration: jasmine and cowdung, temple bells and techno, cell phones and water buffalo, purification rites and pollution, saris and jeans, the city with the longest timeline in the world, living tightly confined to the present moment. Timelessness wordlessly understood by all as same, same, but different. Varanasi. Banaras. Two names. One place. Same, same but…..yes. Non-dualism. You get it.

Anyway. It’s just like me to ramble on. But lucky for me, at least in India, I can get away with it; where the baba might even agree that one endless, run-on sentence we are all living, writing, weaving. Still, for your relief, I know I saw a period around here somewhere…

…that I need to write. You know. Because there hasn’t been an update for months. I know, because my rote emails are starting to rhyme; my fingers itching so badly to tap dance, they are starting to jiggy in the most inappropriate of places (professional work emails). So don’t worry. I haven’t lost my rhythm or reason. I’m just. Well, hell. I’m PACKING AGAIN!

Where now? Back on the road, in the most literal sense. Specifically, a cycle tour. Of Hawaii. Navigating not only the big island, but also the topics of permaculture, green building and sustainable living. You want details? You can learn here:

I know. Totally absent. Apologies my friends and family.

Sometimes life just hits FF on you and the button sticks. For the first day in weeks, today I hit Pause.

Let me collapse on the couch for a few. I promise my fingers will soon warm up.

This has been the longest year of my life.

I realize this entirely now upon touching down in India.  For while I feel this country to be at least be a few emotional Christmas’ distant, I count on my fingers to the realization that I was last here, less than three months ago. Not a single holiday in between.

Really?!

I’m trying to shake the fog of my time hangover, but it’s difficult when Delhi is covered in what the little weather box on the front of the India Times, which is normally the happy home of clip art yellow suns and frowning clouds, calls “smoke.” On that same front page, there is also an article on the worrisome blanket of “smog” that has tucked the city deep into a seasonless sleep. The author worries about the “Beijing effect” on a set of games planned in Delhi for 2010. I worry more about the 30% increase in complaints of congestion and burning eyes and ponder a new communist environmental disease that will level Delhi by discriminating against neither caste or class. And having never seen a blue sky in Delhi, I begin to wonder if human beings foster their short term memories, safely, for the purpose of forge-ahead acceptance? But those are just the insomniac thoughts of girl shrugging off a 12 hour time difference by sleeping 16 erratic hours in a room with a broken window but no light.

At some point in those rough 16 hours, the hotel receptionist knocks on my door to remind me, kindly, to eat. And for this alone, I forgive India all her environmental faults and, with a hand over my heart, pledge to cherish her people and culture till death do us part. India’s respect for the all-healing quality of food and concern for its guests (who by all Indian religions, are regarded as none less than tiny incarnations of God) rank the highest in the world. Respecting the kind prompt, I crawl the four flights of stairs to the rooftop restaurant. No other worldly cuisine pleases my tastes more, and as I say a tiny prayer of total gratitude over my single dish of maatar paneer and zeera rice, I look down and for the first time realize that Indian food is never meant to be eaten alone. Multiple dishes are meant to be served and communally dispersed and enjoyed. Cuisine that promotes sharing, family, service and community? Obama would be pressed for a better motto. And so while I proceed with eating my meal entirely wrong, I still do so with heightened respect and intention.

Ready to retreat right back into bed, I venture out into the street briefly to find a replacement for the tube of toothpaste that I left on my sink in the States. At the nearest pharmacy/everything shop (the most common of India street stands) I request a few toiletries and turn the rusty crank on my old Hindi. After our tiny chat, the shop owner sizes up own newfound 30-second friendship, puts a wait-one-minute finger into the air, and disappears into the back of the shop. When he returns, he removes the tube of toothpaste that I have chosen and paid for, and replaces it with another. It’s the same mark and size, but the replacement tube comes with a free toothbrush attached to the box, and the shopkeeper steps back a little and offers a smile with his gift to me. I almost don’t catch it. I almost push the toothbrush back at him with the insistence that I have no need for an extra toothbrush. But I catch myself just in time. It’s a gift. Not only has he decided not to rip me off (for something for which I’ve already paid), but he’s offering me a free commodity in a country where commodities are generally needed and never rejected. So instead, I appropriately and generously thank him. To which he says, “Yes! Same price! But with a toothbrush! Very good, yes?!”

Very good indeed. Okay. Story time over. A little light seems to be seeping through my broken window and it’s time for me to get out of this room and explore the day. I also need to re-explain myself to the receptionist who reminded me to eat. When he communicated his worry that I had been sleeping all day, I tried to explain to him the half-day time difference between the US and India and, in my exhaust, wrongly communicated that, “in the US, we sleep all day.” To which, of course, he just nodded kindly. Oh, what would we do without the curiosity and compassion that cultural miscommunications breed? The world would be a boring place indeed.

…I did not check off my to-do list before getting on my plane to India, was, “update site!”

My apologies. I promise something fun from Delhi.

They are calling my boarding section!