Occupation-less Therapy

Emissaries of wit and joy,

Cozily nestled in a cybercafe in the capital of Karnitaka with uncollected thoughts but zealous intention.

As was once written about the 17th centurion Baruch Spinoza: "His philosophy is expressed in an idiosyncratic style which often resists comprehension."

With such a precedence, I'll simply type for a while and see what madness trickles from the cortex.

BALLADS: Anyone familiar with the song whose lyrics proclaim, "Clowns to the left of me / Jokers to the right / Here I am, stuck in the middle with you" ? Escalating geo-theo-politico tension embounds and imbinds the nation. Off the coast, the Tamil Liberation Tigers are busy once again with their pyrotechnic displays in Sri Lanka. They blew up a bus near Columbo the other day. Concurrently, India's Prime Minister Vajpayee and Paskistan's General Musharraf are defying Robert Frost's assertion that "Good fences make good neighbors." The line of control in disputed Kashmir continues to shift while reaping over ten deaths each week. Also, mass quantities of explosives were just discovered near the stadium in Jammu prior to the Republic Day festivities. "Bombs to the south of me / Guns to the north / Here I am ..."

WAYS AND MEANS: I've accepted my course in life. I'll be riding this terrestial sphere 'til the moon turns to ashes and the birds sing nevermore. It's about 'samsara.' The Hindu-Buddhist vortex that ensures perpetual reincarnation until we straighten out our personal kinks. Time rewind 2,500 years ago to Sarnath, India -- the recently enlightened Buddha delivers his famous 'Sermon in the Deer Park' where he preaches his message of the 'Middle Way' to Nirvana. Time rewind a few months past to Sarnath, India -- this wayward author delivers his soliloquey 'Colouring Outside the Lines' in which he advocates a self-determined course in life erasing incongruent societal bindings ... creating a tabula rasa canvas on which to scribble one's destiny. Reset the clock three minutes earlier to Bangalore, India -- a white boy sitting at a keyboard displays disturbing indications of early onset Alzheimer's disease and senile dementia.

SUNSETS: Goa is a sun-drenched human carnival. Over ten miles of white sand populated with vacationing Indians, the children of Ra, meandering bovine, dope hazed long-timers, trinket vendors, and Koli fishermen. Lounging with beach chair and parasol I read a great deal and amused myself by watching the drama-comedy of cultural collision. Veiled Islamic fundamentalists meet topless G-stringed Europeans. Classic. While few beaches can approach the Hawaiian shores in perfection, I WAS awed by the bewitching sunsets. An immense Crayola majesty. Consult your maps. As Mercator will show you, the Arabian Sea is farther west than the USA and therefore closer to the sun. Hence, the spectacular descention of the fiery orb is thus magnified. Basic Aristotlean reasoning my friends.

BALLADS II: Good fortune in Calangute (Goa). Befriended by a local bakery-cafe couple, they offered me the keys to their restaurant so I could watch Super Bowl XXXIV. Uncertain of the game time, I arrived at three a.m. ESPN via satellite was showing the Winter X Games from Crested Butte, Colorado. 4:30 a.m., January 31, my anthem resounds: "Are you ready for some football?" In sync with Harrison Ford's cameo I exulted - "I'M READY !!!" Pure, unbridled ecstacy. As my religious doctrine ordains, I leapt from my chair and did my ritualistic football jig while harmonizing vociferously with Hank Williams, Jr. An absolutely phenomenal game enjoyed in solitude. Cool Moe Dee.

BOBBY SANDS DIET PLAN: Lesser degrees of fortune greeted me in Hampi. The ruins of Vijaynager were once the capital of the largest Hindu empire in the long history of India. A beautifully strange and haunting boulder-strewn landscape dominates the wasteland. It resembles a stone jungle replete with chattering monkeys and meandering rivers. [unrelated snippet: "People are like streams ... they become crooked by taking the path of least resistance."] My arrival was ill-timed as the local government instituted a city wide shutdown the morning I came in. We were allowed to stay at the guest houses but all restaurants and shops were closed indefinitely. The nearest food was a thirty minute bus ride distant so I embarked on the Bobby Sands Diet Plan (an activist whose mortality was induced by a hunger strike). Three days of famished serenity. When my protruding ribs fashioned a carpacious exoskeleton I ventured south.

SILICON VALLEY REVISITED: I'm currently in Bangalore, "the town of boiled beans." The city is home to India's booming computer software industry, the world's second largest after the USA. Quite modern and trendy. Rooming in the hovel next door is a guy I met briefly at our Christmas party in Varanasi. Interesting dude. He's painting, sketching, and taking photographs for a gallery show in SoHo this fall. I broke my usual monkish silence for an engaging, tangential discussion covering a bewilderment of topics: overpopulation, holography, perceptual management, the revolutionary Che Guevara, the Templars, Ayn Rand versus Karl Marx, the WTO, Noam Chomsky, the replacement of ideology with image-ology, and the nature/nurture debate. Useful to wake up the grey matter on occassion.

CAREER IDEAS: While reading a series on art history at the British Library I learned that Henri Matisse was working as a laborer when he read a "How To" book on becoming an artist. Voila. Behold the power of books. More attuned to my limited skill set is the vocation of rat catcher. The nearby south Indian tribe known as Irulas have formed a cooperative which they call the Rat and Termite Squad (RATS). The indigenous nomads roam the countryside capturing around 100,000 rodents per year. The Department of Science and Technology pays them about two rupees (4 cents) for each rat they catch. Using the gopher trapping expertise honed in my youth could make this a lucrative pursuit. Added bonus: the Irulas claim that with rice the rats are particularly tasty and highly nutritious.

GIBRAN-ISMS: From the fabled cedars of Lebanon I offer some thoughts from Kahlil Gibran regarding distance, gooshiness, solitude, and arboreal positioning.

"... But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

... Sing and dance together and be joyous, but
let each of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though
they quiver with the same music.

... And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in
each other's shadow. "

ARID SULCI: Rest easy, the torrential flood of inanities is running dry and the fingers resemble a rheumatic claw. The rates are only 60 rupees/hour with a free latte every thirty minutes. That equates to only $1.50 or 30 dead rats ... quality bargain.

--- favoring curry rather than currying favor, Kevin