Gracias

As I sit at the computer in the semi-swank hotel in Sydney, I am not much interested in retrieving emails. Oh wait, that's because I don't have any new ones. Okay, I had a couple and I didn't respond. Whatever. I have really important things to do at this second, like listening in on the American in the lobby battling through shoddy phone circuits to wish her parents and random cousins a happy thanksgiving. Someone, apparently, didn't like the tofurkey. Someone else was upset about an uninvited guest appearing. She talked with her mother about the weather here; it's a bit dreary today. And then she filled her family in on her own thanksgiving festivities, something that I never even considered pursuing from overseas. This woman, screaming in her twangy American, actually went to an American pub last night to eat turkey and stuffing and cranberry goo molded into the shape of a lead-tainted can. I suppose she reminded me that I might be a bit more thankful, even if I don't want to torture myself, I mean, indulge, in what could be the worst culinary fare of the year.

So, thanks be to this universe for allowing me this wonderful earth to explore, and wonderful people to love, and family to hold me and friends to laugh at me. I am looking forward to coming home in December, but I also am forever grateful to have had this chance to look around a little in this southern hemisphere, to see new things, to try to habits. I also want to say thanks for the chance to see a porcupine. He really did look like a giant pincushion.

Hell Yes.

Oh, have I failed to report on the next destination in our whirlwind adventures of the 21st century? To wrangle everyone onto the same page, it might be necessary to run down the list of domiciles we have enjoyed in the past five years. Ready, go: San Francisco, Davis, San Diego, Los Angeles, Pasadena, Wellington. So, we are fairly California-centric. And, to California we will return. In January, with what will be an audible hoorah for everyone in the bay area, we move back to San Francisco. Hoorah! Oh, that one was premature, or practice. Deal with it.

My partner is signing on with another company, this one notable for its pleasant manner of dealing with employees. Well, on occasion anyway. A job is a job, right? After the horrible experience in New Zealand, working on a beast at a beastly company, he is looking forward to manipulating creatures at a place with a gym and a commissary. It is probably a nice feeling to be valued in that way. Having worked at non-profits in my earlier existence, back before becoming a nobody, my recollection of being valued is receiving a free burrito for lunch on those rare afternoons when more important attorneys didn't show up to scheduled lunch meetings. Mmmm. To that, I suppose I will return.

Anyone got any job leads? As you can see, I am easily satisfied.

Kanga Kanga Roo Roo

Ahhhh Australia. I don't think there is a more beautiful place in the world. That one should please a friend of mine who guffawed and then choked on her champagne (as a good Australian will do) when I credited the Kiwis with the wonder of the chocolate-covered Arnotts cookie. I mean, biscuit. Well, Australia has it right, in both the cookie and countryside business.

On safari in India, I contented myself against disappointment by accepting that even if I did not see animals, they were there, watching me, smelling me, just out of the reach of my simple senses. In Australia, on the road from Melbourne to Sydney, I did the same. And, as in India, I was rewarded with actual sightings. We counted five kangaroos, or are those wallabies? I don't know the difference. We found a porcupine (pronounced porky-pine when you actually see them) and we made it ruffle up its hazardous plumage. We didn't see koalas. And last night, on Manly Beach, what may have been a wombat to a North American was really just a large rat. I prefer to recall it as a wombat because it sounds more adventurous. Of course, wombats probably don't cruise along ivy-covered fences sampling from rubbish bins at a heavily populated beach. But, whatever. Maybe that large cockroach just behind me at the restaurant was a wombat too. I steel myself against flinching because, while traveling, it's all safari.

As always, Sydney rocks. By night, the Opera House glows like a phosphorescent crustacean against an glimmering, electrified skyline. The sharp eyes of my now happily unemployed husband spotted a glowing rodeo of bats frantically circling above the Sydney Harbour Bridge. They covered the entire expanse but did not stray from the spotlights illuminating their arcs and dips. We see lots of people kissing, and it seems like the most natural thing in the world. Who wouldn't want to kiss here? This city is perfect for all kinds of petting and patting, maybe on the waterfront in front of screaming seagulls, on street corners while busy business people thread around each other, on board ferries, trains, monorails, even. Mmm, it's nice to have my husband back.

My dog is shorn

Can anyone guess where we will land in two months? Or would anyone care to make a prediction? Can it be a free prediction? I am close to sending in my husband's hard-earned bucks to an online horoscope outfit but I'd like to exhaust my complimentary options first.

At this point, for the first time in our lovely years together, my partner and I are at an absolute loss as to our destination. It seems that, sometimes, an abundance of opportunity makes the stew a little too rich, though it is remarkably palatable.

As my husband toils through misery and strife at the tail end of an almost unconscionable contract, pinning down the stray pieces of digital hair on a soon-to-be-released beast, I am at home, admiring the view and restraining myself from committing to any course of action. Of course, I could easily commit to things that are not related to my husband's professional course, like cleaning the house, or finishing my new story about a red-headed whore who fails miserably in her career but retains her position because she is willing to get into any position to please the body behind the hand who signs her contracts. Did I say whore? I meant, manager. I could paint a lovely picture of the admirable view, or complete the illustrations for a story for my charming and perfect niece called Vivi's Wonder World. There is really so much to do.

But here I am, checking emails, reading the New Yorker and petting my newly shorn doggie. She is ready for her trip home after a groom that cost more than my last three haircuts. She looks svelte and she knows it.

If anyone knows where we should go, please do let us know. I may have to resort to pinning the donkey tail on our world map. To make it fair, I will drink a heavy amount of gin prior to that exercise. I am too familiar with the placement of California, having gently touched the pink state of my home, with some melancholy, again and again since I have returned from India. Would anyone like to play pin the tail of jackass on your next home with me? Does that carry good tidings or not?

The Realest Real World?

Home, sweet home. The return trip was long, as they usually are. I didn't really sleep on the interminable flight from Mumbai to Sydney, until the very last couple hours. While everyone enjoyed breakfast and morning in-flight entertainment, like War of the Worlds, I snoozed and shifted in my two seats. I was oblivious, of course, to the alien fighting on the screens, and the alien food on the trays, because I had my yellow earplugs tightly shoved in toward my brain, my snug-fitting, double-elastic blindfold covering most of my face, one giant leopard print neck pillow devouring my head, and three blankets draped over my ultra small, collapsed ball of a body. When the plane landed, I actually screamed because I thought we had crashed. In the split second before I realized I was still alive, and almost home, I thought, "gee, dying in a plane crash is a lot like a rough landing."

Having survived the remainder of my journey, I am back in action in my lovely New Zealand home. Yesterday, an acquaintance greeted me with the statement, "Welcome back to the real world!" Ahem. I said, "Thanks, yeah. Right. It's nice to be home and stuff. I gotta take this call." And then I pretended to answer my phone.

Welcome back to the real world? What world was I in while I was in India? Initially, I thought I would assert that the real world is all over the place, and we all live in it, and isn't that great? After some thought, however, I might propose that the world I experienced in India, or the parts of it not connected to the yoga shala anyway, were the most real of any real world I have ever known. There were moments in India when I felt as though I glimpsed the tiniest fraction of a view of what is real. And though it was a fleeting glimpse, I felt very strongly that I would remember the experience forever.

The friends and family who know me best will know that my trip to India had very little to do with a spiritual quest, and a great deal to do with an ambitious thirst for adventure. I make no mystery of my interest to go see things. The yoga thing for me is nothing more than an enjoyable method of letting my mind find peace for a couple hours every day. Having very great questions, but very little worry, about what it means to exist as myself, I enjoy yoga in the same way that I enjoy dreaming or holding my breath under water or having an orgasm. That said, I don't really give great import to the functional act of doing yoga poses; rather, I value the consequences of doing and thinking and learning yoga. If I can or can't do a physical pose doesn't mean much to me. Whether I can or can't suspend the activity in my brain for just a little while does get my attention.

The yoga practice I found at the Pattabhi Jois shala in Mysore was mostly about the poses. I enjoyed watching people perform, but I didn't find anything more remarkable to remember than some really nice folks and that guy in the front row who can almost stick his head up his ass. For that reason, it didn't factor in to my consideration of what is real and what isn't real about the world I visited.

What I found more real than real in India was the gentle, simple and civil way people could speak about spirituality. There was nothing goofy or uncomfortable in hearing comments about the efficacy of chanting something that you would like to see in existence. Discussing meditation techniques didn't provoke any skeptical sidelong glances or disturbed coughing. And most powerfully, I discovered in my teachers an acceptance and celebration of each individual's idiosyncracies. I came to believe that it is within these little differences among us humans that the path to our inherent personal perfection exists. And so, my tabla teacher, Bhargava, accepted that I would make noise or curse everytime I hit a THOM rather than a DHI, and he laughed. My massage teacher, Kumar, understood that I would question him relentlessly out of fear of incapacitating my victim, I mean, friend, and he kindly gave guidance. And my Ayurveda teacher, Dr. Kumar, recognized that my patience wears thin when I know there is more to learn and time is running short, and so, at the end of class, he would always throw in a little bit more, a little bit fast, with a cheerful nod, because there is always more to learn.

Granted, the experience that I had in India was not the world that I was raised to inhabit. I didn't have to work or do chores or drive a car or pay bills; nor was I able to stay clean very easily. But in terms of being real, it seems that a world in which the primary intention of a day is not just to get by or ahead, but rather, to peacefully be, is the world that might take the cake. In a world where one can simply be and simply be what one is, all of the illusions provoking all of the struggle we endure suddenly disappear. What is real is only what is, and not what we are told we should want. It's not often the real world around here reminds me of this.