clean shaven

we stood in a circle and watched as she shaved her head.  Locks of hair fell into the red bucket, strand by strand until it was all gone.  "Are you sure you want me to cut more?"  Anna continuously asked.  "Do you want to see yourself before I start shaving?  Maybe you want to keep some of your hair."  

"No." She replied.  "Just shave it all."   And then slowly, the razor grazed her scalp.  It took over an hour.  The room was softly light with candle light.  The stars were in lined for hair cutting.  She had consulted the universe and tonight was the night.  

I sat in silence for the whole hour.  In awe of her courage and vicariously feeling the sensation of detachment and letting go.  With her eyes closed she lifted her head towards to skies as if waiting for rain to wash over her, cleanse her.  

when it was all over we asked, "how does it feel?" 

"lighter."  She smiled.  "Who needs shampoo?  I've got extra."  

my friend walked over and felt my head.  "You have a good head for shaving."  He laughed.  "You should go next."  

Should I?  Why am I so attached to my hair anyways?  Its been the bane of my existence.  As if my beauty exists within my hair?  Shouldn't my beauty lie somewhere in my heart?  Somewhere in my soul?  I twirl it when I'm flirting with you and dye it to feel anew.  I straighten it before interviews and curl it to go dancing.  But maybe if you saw me for me, I wouldn't need to do any of those things.  Maybe I don't need to do any of those things.  Maybe I don't need my hair to impress you.  

pictures try again

I've been informed that the last attempt at posting pictures did not succeed.  Here is the second attempt.  

Afterlife?

I found a puppy on the street tonight as I was walking to buy coffee.  He was laying in the middle of the street and looked up at me lifting his head in my direction.  So I stopped and bent over to pet him.  I haven't done this much here in India, petting random street dogs.  But for some reason, this one beckoned me.  Upon closer look, I realized that his leg was broken.  He couldn't move and was as thin as a skeleton with his rib cage protruding.  So much poverty in India, so much death, hunger, starvation.  People walk by street dogs unnoticed.  Why feed a dog when there is a person dying just across the street?  

I don't know why but I had to take care of this dog.  So I brought him home.  He died in my arms in the middle of the night.  2:05 am.  My hand laid on his stomach as he took his last breath and felt his last heart beat.  My room stinks of him.  The four hours that my life was graced by his presence has left me with a room full of dog urine and spilled milk.  He couldn't have been more than two years old.  He limped around my room whimpering, searching.  Did he know it was his time?  I carried his body outside and laid it next to a pile of garbage.  I don't know what else to do.  

Ive never felt a living being die in my hands.  is this preparation?  a reminder?  a street dog or a billionaire, there'll come a time when we all take our last breath.  

Hiking in leeches

Coffee plantations and hiking in rain forests.  

We took a bus to coorg early sat morning.  It was moon day so no yoga class. Two consecutive days off, hard to come by and perfect opportunity for a weekend trip.  Coorg is famous for its coffee plantations and two nearby mountains for hiking.  All kinds of wildlife we could encounter, the lonely planet told us.  But leeches were not mentioned.

As we were hiking through beautiful rain forests, my friend suddenly turned around and asked, "of all your traveling, have you ever come across leeches?" 

"God no, gross." I breathed a sign of relief.  My mom had told me horror stories of leeches crawling on her during her communist farming days in China.  Even thinking about it horrifies me, I can't imagine.

Two minutes later I felt something itchy on my ankles and looked down and screamed on the top of my lungs.  There were 4 of them.  Black, slimy, and eating away into my ankles.  

"Don't pull them out." My friend screamed as I yanked them off my ankles.

Too late.  

 

Monsoon yoga

I made it through my first week of yoga.  My body has adjusted to all the twists and turns and i've now increased my practice to twice a day.  

The monsoon came in the middle of class flooding the room and forcing us to move.  The rain pounded on the tile roof as I exhaled into downward dog.  A serenity washes over me.  I am in a state of bliss.  I am exactly where i am suppose to be.  If only I could stay forever in this downward dog breathing to the sound of  raindrops...how will I ever convince myself to go back to prelims and dissertations?  Maybe in another lifetime I was meant to be a yoga teacher on the beaches of Thailand.

Something about coming to my mat.  It pushes all else away.  My mind no longer wonders or worries, I am present as I inhale into and exhale out of each posture.  

"And inside of you, there is a peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be at home at yourself."

I met a Taiwanese woman today studying yoga.  She's in her 50s and traveled all the way to India on her own speaking very few words of English.  

"I often think about how I would want to die...I would pick some remote place where nobody would ever find my body, and from which I could enjoy an especially beautiful view.  I'd lie down facing that view and take my morphine.  That would be the best way to die...with the last sight I see being a view of Montana as I want to remember it."

"Why be elated by material profit?  The one who pursues a goal of evenmindedness is neither jubilant with gain nor depressed by loss.  He knows that man arrives penniless in this world and departs without a single rupee."

Maybe if we spent more time thinking about death, we'd know how to live.